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ON THE THRESHOLD. 



THEODORE T. HUNGER. 



"Many men that stumble at the threshold." 



BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COjMPANY. 

188L 



I 



l/rs'i) 






Copyright, 1S80, 
By THEODORE T. HUNGER. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge: 
Stereotyped and Printed by H. 0. Hougliton & Co. 



PEEFAOE. 



The object of this little book is to put 
into clear form some of the main principles 
that enter into life as it is now opening be- 
fore young men in this country. Its sug- 
gestions are more specific and direct than if 
they had been addressed to older persons ; 
still, I have aimed to support every point 
by sound reasons, and to join the authority 
and inspiration of the greater minds with 
my own views. I think I may assure my 
readers that they will not encounter a sim- 
ple mass of advice, nor the generalities of 
an essay, but rather a series of hints suit- 
able to the times, and pointing out paths 
that are just now somewhat obscured. If 
they find some pages that are strenuous in 
their suggestions, they will find none that 
are keyed to impossible standards of con- 



duct, or filled with moralizings that are 
remote from the e very-day business of life. 
It is not pleasant to play the rdle of 
Polonius, and I undertake it only because 
Laertes seems to be quite as much in need 
of advice as ever. I have not, however, 
written out of a critical mood, so much as 
from a desire to bring young men face to 
face with the inspiring influences that, in a 
peculiar degree, surround them. The coun- 
try was never so prosperous, the future 
never so full of happy assurance as it is to- 
day. To point out the way of reaping the 
double harvest of this prosperity and a 
noble manhood, is the motive that underlies 
these pages. 



CONTENTS. 



PACE 

I. Purpose 1 

II. Friends akd Companions .... 31 

III. Manners 51 

IV. Thrift 75 

V. Sele-Reliance and Courage ... 99 

VI. Health 123 

VII. Reading .155 

VIII. Amusements 183 

IX. Faith. 209 



I. 

PURPOSE. 



"I long hae thougbt, my youthfu* friend, 

A something to have sent you, 
Tho' it should serve nae ither end 

Than just a kind memento ; 
But how the subject theme may gang, 

Let time and chance determine ; 
Perhaps, it may turn out a sang, 

Perhaps, turn out a sermon." 

BUKNS. 

" Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you 
reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny." 
— Anox. 

" So teach us to number our days that we may apply our 
hearts unto wisdom." — PsAoi xc. 



I. 

PUEPOSE. 

In entering npon this series of essays, or 
talks with yonng men, I wish to have it un- 
derstood at the outset that I do not under- 
take to cover or even touch the whole truth 
of the subject in hand. The philosophical 
basis and the religious application will not 
be much, regarded ; hence, to some they 
may seem to lack profound thought, and to 
others moral earnestness ; but I shall not 
mind if I can lead my readers to think 
seriously of what I do say. If I speak the 
truth, it will have enough philosophy in it ; 
if it is carefully heeded, it will of itself 
grow into the moral and religious. 

I begin with Purjyose^ because it natu- 
rally underlies the themes that are to fol- 
low, and also because it is a matter of special 
importance. I say special because I think 
that just now many young men are entering 
life without any very definite purpose ; as 



4 PURPOSE. 

some one lias put it, " the world is full of 
purposeless people." It is clue in part to 
nearly ten years of hard times, when occu- 
pations have been closed up, and multitudes 
of young men could find little to do. Busi- 
ness men have struggled along as best they 
could, capitalists have been idle, and young 
men have been shut up to the few chance 
openings, without much choice based on fit- 
ness or desire. It is also due to the fact 
that, during the previous years, large and 
sudden accumulations of property were made 
by people not accustomed to its use. The 
consciousness of wealth is always dangerous. 
When a young man comes to feel that be- 
cause his father has wealth he has no need 
of personal exertion, he is doomed. Only 
the rarest natural gifts and the most excep- 
tional training can save the sons of the rich 
from failure of the true ends of life. They 
may escape vice and attain to respectability, 
but for the most part they are hurt in some 
degree or respect. The consciousness of 
wealth in the latter part of life, after one 
has earned or become prepared for it, may 
be not only not injurious, but healthful, 
though one ought to be able to live a high 
and happy life without it. But anything 



PURPOSE. 5 

that lessens in a young man the feeling that 
he is to make his own way in the world is 
hurtful to the last degree. 

As the result of these two causes, — with 
others, doubtless, — young men of the pres- 
ent years, as a class, are not facing life with 
that resokite and definite purpose that is 
essential both to manhood and to external 
success. There is far less of this early meas- 
urement and laying hold of life with some 
definite intent than there was a generation 
ago. It is to be feared that we could not 
again fight the war for the Union to the 
same issue. Young men do not so much 
go to college as they are sent. They do not 
push their way into callings, but suffer them- 
selves to be led into them. Indeed, the sa- 
cred word calling seems to have lost its 
meaning ; they hear no voice summoning 
them to the appointed field, but drift into 
this or that, as happens. They appear to be 
waiting, — to be floating with the current 
instead of rowing up the stream towards 
the hills where lie the treasures of life. I 
mean, of course, that this seems to be the 
drift, — not that it is a deliberate purpose. 

My object is to interrupt this tendency, — 
to induce you to aim at a far end rather 



6 PURPOSE. 

than a near one ; to live under a purpose 
rather than under impulse ; to set aside the 
thought of enjoyment, and get to thinking 
of attainment ; to conceive of life as a race 
instead of a drift. 

Men may be divided in many ways, but 
til ere is no clearer cut division than between 
those who have a purpose and those who 
are without one. It is the character of the 
purpose that determines the character of 
the man, — for a purpose may be good or 
bad, high or low. It is the strength and 
definiteness of the purpose that determine 
the measure of success. 

It is one of the gracious features of our 
nature that we are capable of forming high 
and noble purposes. The mind overleaps its 
ignorance, and fixes upon what is wisest 
and best. A child is always planning no- 
ble things before its " life fades into the 
light of the common day." There may not 
always be congruity in these early ambi- 
tions, but they are nearly always noble. A 
friend of mine set out in life with the com- 
plex purpose of becoming " a great man, a 
good man, and a stage-driver." He has 
not yet achieved greatness, and I doubt if 
he has ever held a four-in-hand or knows 



PURPOSE. 7 

wbat tandem means, except in its Latin, 
sense ; but ke has not failed in the other 
part, being the worthy pastor of a church, 
over which he presides with a dignity and 
wisdom that are the proper outcome of his 
early conceptions. The weaker element 
naturally passed away, and the nobler ones 
took up his expanding powers. 

Nor does this distinction divide men ac- 
cording to good and bad ; for, while an 
aimless man cannot be said to be good, he 
may cherish a very definite aim without 
ranking amongst the virtuous. Few men 
ever held to a purpose more steadily than 
Warren Hastings, having for the dream 
and sole motive of his youth and manhood 
to regain the lost estates and social position 
of his family ; but he can hardly be classed 
amongst good men. He is a fine example, 
however, of how a clearly conceived pur- 
pose strengthens and inspires a man. The 
career of Beaconsfield — the most brilliant 
figure amongst modern English statesmen 
— is another illustration of how a definite 
purpose carries a man on to its fulfillment. 
When the young Jew was laughed and 
jeered into silence in his first attempt to 
address the House of Commons, he re- 



marked, " The time will come when you 
will hear me ; " speaking not out of any 
pettishness of the moment, but from a set- 
tled purpose to lead his compeers. The re- 
buff but whetted the edge of his grand 
ambition. 

I do not mean to say that a purpose, if 
cherished with sufficient energy, will al- 
ways carry a man to its goal, — for every 
man has his limitations, — but rather that 
it is sure to carry him on towards some 
kind of success ; often it proves greater 
than that aimed at. Shakespeare went 
down to London to retrieve his fortune, — 
a very laudable purpose ; but the ardor 
with which he sought it unwittingly ended 
in the greatest achievements of the human 
intellect. Saul determined to crush out 
Christianity ; but the energy of his purpose 
was diverted to the opposite and immeasur- 
ably nobler end. It would be absurd for 
me to assure you that if you aim and strive 
with sufficient energy to become great 
statesmen, or the heads of corporations, or 
famous poets or artists, or for any other spe- 
cific high end, you will certainly reach it. 
For though there are certain great prizes 
that any man may win who will pay the 



PURPOSE. ' 9 

price, there are others that are reseryed 
for the few who are peculiarly fortunate, 
or have peculiar claims. The Providence 
that, blindly to us, endows and strangely 
leads, apportions the great honors of exist- 
ence ; but Providence has nothing good or 
high in store for one who does not reso- 
lutely aim at something high and good. 
A purpose is the eternal condition of suc- 
cess. Xothing will take its place. Talent 
will not ; nothing is more common than 
unsuccessful men of talent. Genius will 
not ; unrewarded genius is a proverb ; the 
"mute, inglorious Milton" is not a poetic 
creation. The chance of events, the push 
of cii'cumstances, will not. The natural un- 
folding of faculties will not. Education 
will not ; the country is full of unsuccessful 
educated men ; indeed, it is a problem of 
society what to do with the young men it 
is turning out of its colleges and profes- 
sional schools. There is no road to success 
but through a clear, strong purpose. A 
purpose underlies character, culture, posi- 
tion, attainment of whatever sort. Shake- 
speare says : " Some achieve greatness, and 
some have greatness thrust upon them;" 
but the latter is external, and not to be ac- 
counted as success. 



10 PURPOSE. 

It is wortli while to look into tlie reasons 
of the matter a little. 

(1.) A purpose, steadily held, trains the 
faculties into strength and aptness. 

The first main thing a man has to do in 
this world is to turn his possibilities into 
powers, or to get the use of himself. Here 
we are packed full of faculties, — physical, 
mental, moral, social, — with almost no in- 
stincts, and therefore no natural use of 
them ; a veritable box of tools, ready for 
use. Think what a capability is lodged in 
the hand of the pianist or of the physician, 
— fairly seeing with his fingers. Or take 
the mechanical ej^e, instantly seizing pro- 
portions ; or the ear of the musician ; or the 
mind bending itself to mathematical prob- 
lems, or grouping wide arrays of facts for 
induction, — the every-day work of the pro- 
fessional man, the merchant, and the manu- 
facturer. How to use these tools — how to 
get the faculties at work — is the main ques- 
tion. The answer is, steady use under a 
main inirpose. 

The call to-day is not only for educated, 
but for trained men. The next mightiest 
eyent that daily happens in this world of 
ours, after the sunrise, — that " daily mira- 



PURPOSE. 11 

cle," as Edwin Arnold calls it, — is the pub- 
lication of such a newspaper as the " New 
York Herald " or "London Times." If it 
were possible to send to Mars or Jupiter 
a single illustration of our highest achieve- 
ments, it should be a copy of a great Daily. 
I think nothing finer could be brought back. 
But what produces this superb and gigantic 
achievement three hundred and more times 
a year ? Not learning, talent, energ}^, nor 
money, but training. From the editor-in- 
chief, with his frequent leaders, — broad, 
compact, trenchant, — and the manager, 
bringing together the various departments 
in just proportion and harmony, so that 
the paper goes from the press almost like 
the solar system in its adjusted balance, 
down to the folding and distributing de- 
partments, the work throughout is done 
by men trained to their specific tasks by 
steady and sympathetic habit. 

Every man's work should be both an in- 
spiration and a trade ; that is, he should 
love it, and he should have that facility in 
it that comes from use. It is said that Na- 
poleon could go through the manual of the 
common soldier better than any man in his 
armies. He would not have been the great- 



12 PURPOSE. 

est general had he not been the best soldier ; 
his genius would have been weak without 
the support of the drill and the practical 
knowledge of all the details of the military. 
So of raih'oading, now one of the great 
callings ; it has become a nearly universal 
custom that every higher position shall be 
filled from below by promotion, according 
to excellence, and this excellence turns upon 
two points : an intelligent and sympathetic 
interest in the work, and consequent handi- 
ness in it. One cannot look over a com- 
pany of railroad men without perceiving 
that those highest up have the most head 
for the entire business. I have noticed, in 
looking at machinery, that the proprietor 
can explain it better than the workman who 
operates it. 

All lines of business are conducted more 
and more upon the principle of promotion. 
Less and less do men step from one occupa- 
tion to another. The demand is for trained 
men. But life is too short and the stand- 
ards are too severe for various trainings. 
It is seldom one is found who has thoroughly 
fitted himself for diverse pursuits. Our apt- 
itudes are not many. Pick out the success- 
ful man in almost any occupation, and nearly 



PURPOSE. 13 

without exception it will be found lie has 
been trained to it. 

(2.) Life is cumulative in ail ways. A 
steady purpose is like a river, that gathers 
volume and momentum by flowing on. The 
successful man is not one who can do many 
things indifferently, but one thing in a su- 
perior manner. Versatility is overpraised. 
There is a certain value in having many 
strings to one's bow, but there is more value 
in having a bow and a string, a hand "and 
an eye, that will every time send the arrow 
into the bull's-eye of the target. The world 
is full of vagabonds who can turn their 
hands to anything. The man who does odd 
jobs is not the one who gets very far up in 
any job. The factotum is a convenience, 
but he is seldom a success. The machinist 
who works in anywhere is not the one who 
is put to the nicest work. A certain con- 
centration is essential to excellence, except 
in rare cases like Leonardo da Vinci, and 
Pascal, and Aristotle, and Franklin, whose 
natures were so broad as to cover all studies 
and pursuits. One of the most extensive 
wool-bu3^ers in the world says that his suc- 
cess is due to the fact that his father and 
grandfather handled wool, that his own ear- 



14 PURPOSE. 

liest recollections were of handling wool, 
and that he had kept on handling it. The 
largest manufacturer of paper in the coun- 
try is the son of a paper-maker, born and 
bred to all the details of the business. 
There are, indeed, many cases of large suc- 
cess where men haye passed from one pur- 
suit to another, but in most you will find 
a certain unity running through their vari- 
ous occupations. One may begin a stone- 
cutter and end as a geologist, like Hugh 
Miller, or a sculptor, like Powers ; or as a 
machinist, and turn out an inventor ; or as a 
printer, and become a publisher. A strong 
definite purpose is many-handed, and lays 
hold of whatever is near that can serve it ; 
it has a magnetic power that draws to itself 
whatever is kindred. 

(3.) A purpose, by holding one down to 
some steady pursuit and legitimate occupa- 
tion, wars against the tendency to engage 
in ventures and speculations. The devil of 
the business world is chance. Chance is 
chaotic ; it belongs to the period 



" When eldest Night 
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, held 
Eternal anarchy amidst the noise 
Of endless wars, and by confusion stood.' 



PURPOSE. 15 

It is opposed in nature to order and law ; 
it is the abdication of reason, the enthrone- 
ment of guess. The chance element in 
business is not only demoralizing to the 
man, but in the long run it is disastrous to 
his fortunes. And if it yields a temporary 
success it is a success unearned, and there- 
fore unappreciated ; for we must put some- 
thing of thought and genuine effort into an 
enterprise before we can get any substan- 
tial good out of it. The defalcations, the 
shoddy of society, the diamonds gleaming 
on unwashed hands, the ignorance that 
looks through plate-glass, and no small part 
of the crime that looks through iron bars, 
are the creations of the chance or specula- 
tive element in business. No good ever 
comes from it. If it lifts a man up, it is 
only to dash him to the earth. In Califor- 
nia they aptly call it " playing with the 
tiger," and the game always ends by the 
tiger eating the man. The chances in the 
stock market of San Francisco are less than 
in Chinese gambling, at which the Caucas- 
ian affects to laugh; but the Mongolian 
plays to better purpose with his one chance 
in ten than does the other in the ever-re- 
curring bonanza. The Californians are not 



16 PURPOSE. 

yet a ricli people; but almost every old 
resident has at some time lield a fortune in 
bis bands. Tbeir speculations are very like 
tbeir smelting of quicksilver, — going up an 
expansive vapor, but trickling back solid 
into a single reservoir. If there is one pur- 
pose a young man needs to hold to rigidly 
and without exception, it is to keep to le- 
gitimate modes of business. Don't abjure 
your reason by appealing to chance, nor 
insult order by taking up that which, as 
Llilton says, "by confusion stands." Don't 
of deliberate purpose make a figure of your- 
self for " the spirits of the wise sitting in 
the clouds to laugh at." A steady purpose 
embodied in a substantial pursuit shuts out 
these chance forms of business. Question 
the men of substantial character and fort- 
une, and you will find that they have 
avoided the illegitimate in business, and 
have held fast to some steady line of pur- 
suit, — busy in prosperous times and pa- 
tiently waiting in hard times. The last 
ten years have witnessed a bravery and 
sagacity worthy of highest admiration, — 
men conducting business year after year 
without profit or at a loss, keeping up their 
relations with the business world, carrying 



PURPOSE. 17 

along tlieir employees, exercising forbear- 
ance with less fortunate creditors, nursing 
the dull embers of their unremunerative 
business instead of petulantly suffering 
them to go out. The previous ten years 
showed us the heroism of war ; but these 
ten years of stagnation have revealed the 
heroism of peace, and these brave, patient 
waiters upon fortune are now reaping their 
reward, while those who gave up and 
turned to this and that are out of the ranks 
of our great army of prosperity. 

It may seem from what I have said that 
I would advise young men to concentrate 
their entire energies upon a pursuit, and 
forget all else. But I am very far from 
doing that. 

The most fundamental mistake men make 
is in not recognizing the breadth of their 
nature, and a consequent working of some 
single part of it. One must give play to 
his whole nature and fill out all his re- 
lations, or he will have a poor ending. He 
must heed the social, domestic, and relig- 
ious elements of his being, as well as the 
single one that yields him a fortune. These 
should be embraced under a purjjose as 
clear and strong as that which leads to 



18 PURPOSE. 

wealth, and be cherished, not out of a bare 
sense of duty, but for manly completeness. 
The most pitiable sight one ever sees is a 
young man doing nothing ; the furies early 
drag him to his doom. Hardly less pitia- 
ble is a young man doing but one thing, — 
his whole being centred on money or fame 
— forgetful of the broad world of intellec- 
tual capacity within him, of the broader 
and sweeter world of social and domestic 
life, and of the infinite world of the spirit 
that inspires him on every side, and holds 
his destinies, whether he knows it or not. 
It is not only quite possible, but an easy 
and natural thing, for a young man front- 
ing life to say, I will make the most of 
myself ; I will recognize my whole nature ; 
I will neglect no duty that belongs to all 
men ; I will carry along with an even and 
just hand those relations that make up a 
full manhood. 

I find four general purposes that should 
enter into the plan of every man's life as 
essential to its completeness. Hereafter I 
shall speak more definitely ; now only of 
fundamental or leading purposes. 

(1.) A young man should have an em- 
ployment congenial, if possible, and as near 



PURPOSE. 19 

as may be to the line of pursuit he intends to 
follow. I have anticipated much that might 
be said here. The choice of a profession or 
occupation is a hard one to handle practi- 
cally or speculatively. So many are forced 
into work, and take that nearest at hand ; 
so many drift into an occupation because 
the time has come ; so many are set to work 
too early for choice, that few seem left who 
can make a careful selection. It is a sad 
thing that any should be defrauded of this 
natural prerogative. It may be quite right 
to train a boy to a calling, but never to the 
exclusion of his personal choice ; if for the 
ministry, and he deliberately prefers to be- 
come a machinist, or a farmer, or an editor, 
it must be suffered. A call, or calling, is a 
divine thing, and must be obeyed. Pitt was 
trained from his earliest years for the great 
place he filled, but for the most part great 
men have chosen for themselves. But one 
should settle the matter only after very 
thorough consideration. Dr. Bushnell once 
said to a young man who was consulting 
him on this point, " Grasp the handle of 
your being," — a most significant and pro- 
found piece of advice. There is in every 
one a taste or fitness that is as a handle to 



20 PURPOSE. 

the faculties; if one gets hold of it, he 
can work the entire machinery of his being 
to the best advantage. Before committing 
one's self to a pursuit, one should make a 
very thorough exploration of himself, and 
get down to the core of his being. The 
fabric of one's life should rest uj^on the cen- 
tral and abiding qualities of one's nature, 

— else it will not stand. Hence a choice 
should be based on what is within rather 
than be drawn from without. Choose your 
employment because you like it, and not be- 
cause it has some external promise. The 
"good opening" is in the man, — not in 
circumstances. An ill-adaptation will nul- 
lify any good promise, while aptitude cre- 
ates success. All true life and success are 
from within. God so made the world and 
all things in it, — " seed within itself " is 
the eternal law. I do not mean that every 
boy has an inborn taste for some specific 
work, — type-setting, or blacksmithing, or 
editing. Aptitudes are generic ; if one fol- 
lows his general taste he will probably suc- 
ceed in several kindred pursuits. While we 
cannot well go contrary to nature, there is a 
certain play and oscillation of our faculties, 

— as of the planets that yet keep to the 



PURPOSE. 21 

appointed journey . The mechanical eye 
covers a large variety of employments. A 
spirit of ministration is fundamental to at 
least two of the great professions. One of 
an intensely reflective disposition should 
not make existence a long battle by bind- 
ing himself to a life of external activity ; 
and many a man pines and shrivels in the 
study who would exult in a life upon the 
soil. But having got into some occupation 
or line of pursuit that is fairly congenial, 
running in the direction of your inmost 
taste and aptitude, hold fast to it. If it is 
altogether distasteful after fair trial, throw 
it aside, and start again. No one can row 
against the stream all his life and make 
a success of it. It is fundamental that 
there should be in the main accord between 
the man and his work. I do not mean that 
one is absolutely to do the same thing — 
shove the plane, beat the anvil, tend the 
loom, measure land, sell goods — to the end, 
but that he should continue in the same gen- 
eral department, — thus utilizing previous 
aptness and experience. The work first un- 
dertaken may be too restricting ; one should 
be always looking for its higher forms. 
One may climb by a steady purpose as well 



22 PURPOSE. 

as by a persistent iteration of tlie same 
thing, but it must be in a related field of 
effort. SucQessful life is commonly of one 
piece ; and it comes of intelligent purpose, 
— never by chance. 

(2.) Having thus settled into some fair 
line of pursuit, the next main purpose 
should be to get a home of one's own. 
Every young man expects to marry, and 
this expectation ought to carry with it the 
definite thought of a home, — a thing not 
realized under any boarding or renting sys- 
tem. 

I put this among the fundamental pur- 
poses simply because it is such. Character, 
happiness, destiny, turn on its realization. 
It is the main safeguard against immoral- 
ity. It is essential to a development of 
the whole nature. It is the chief source of 
sound and abiding happiness. It is the sur- 
est defense against evil fortune. When 
once a home has been secured, abject pov- 
erty almost never follows. Man is like the 
animals in that his first need is a place in 
which to hide his head. Indeed, a home 
sums up life ; outside of it, it is meagre and 
partial. In the home every worthy purpose 
finds realization. It is the objective point 



PURPOSE. 23 

in existence, — a home beyond and a home 
here. Hence it should not only mingle in 
one's dreams as among the probabilities, but 
should enter in amongst the distinct pur- 
poses. " A home of my own," — no phrase 
of English words is so sweet as that. A 
bit of ground where you can plant a rose 
and hope to pluck its blossoms as the sum- 
mers come and go; a roof that shall be 
your shelter for tender dependents ; a spot 
of earth and a house owned, and so minis- 
tering to that deep call for a resting place 
natural to us all ; a home to hold loved ones 
while they live, and to enshrine their mem- 
ory when they are gone ; the goal of labors, 
the sanctuary of the affections, the gateway 
into and out of the world, — a thing so cen- 
tral and large as this should enter into one's 
plans with sharp and strong purpose. 

(3.) Another central purjDose should be 
to become a good citizen. This is not so 
trite a point as it seems. The moralizing 
on our relation to government that abounds 
in literature and common speech chiefly re- 
fers to subjects rather than to citizens. 
Obedience and loyalty are old virtues ; citi- 
zenship is comparatively a new thing, of 
which we have yet hardly a full conception. 



24 PURPOSE. 

To obey as subjects is a duty very well un- 
derstood ; to govern as citizens is a complex 
act, iuA^olving the two duties of obedience 
and ruling. The Sovereign People is a vast 
and significant phrase. If we were to spec- 
ulate upon it, we should find that it in- 
volves the highest function of man ; for man 
reaches the perfection of his nature when 
obedience and sway are perfectly coordi- 
nated, — that is, when he has learned to 
obey and to rule, doing each perfectly. To 
overcome and sit in an eternal throne is the 
highest glimpse of revealed destiny. It is 
something very grand and inspiring — if we 
will think of it — that our country puts 
upon us as citizens this sum and end of all 
duties; that citizenship is in the direct 
line of eternal destiny. It is an adjustment 
of the political and the spiritual that marks 
the coming of the kingdom of heaven. One 
of the thoughts to which a young man 
should school himself is that he is an actual 
part of the government. Good citizenship 
thus becomes an inalienable duty, an obli- 
gation springing from the nature of things. 
When one is so related to the state he can- 
not see a law broken, or a public trust 
abused, or an office perverted, without a 



PURPOSE. 25 

sense of personal wrong. The great Louis 
said, " I am France," but every American 
citizen can say, " I am the state." By good 
citizenship I do not mean necessarily a 
mingling in what is technically named pol- 
itics, though one must not hold one's self 
aloof from the details of citizenship, but 
rather that the public welfare should weigh 
steadily on every man's heart and con- 
science ; as it was the duty of every Ro- 
man to " see to it that no harm came to the 
republic." 

I place good citizenship amongst the fun- 
damental aims, because it represents a feel- 
ing that is central to character. One can- 
not avoid it without self-injury. It leaves 
a man exposed to the absorption of his pri- 
vate business, and so to that selfishness and 
narrowness that comes from a limited range 
of interests. Exclusive devotion to the 
home makes one weak ; to business, selfish. 
A hearty and practical interest in the state 
alone can make one strong and large. 

(4.) After one has well settled himself in 
these three main relations, — employment, 
home, country, — all other general purposes 
may be summed up in the one word culture ; 
or, as this is a somewhat derided and over- 



26 PURPOSE. 

used word at present, I will put it otherwise ; 

— resolve to make the most of yourself. 
Still that word culture is the best. Culti- 
vate yourself ; I do not mean in the sense of 
putting on a finish, but of feeding the roots 
of your being, strengthening your capaci- 
ties, nourishing whatever is good, repress- 
ing whatever is bad. Determine that not a 
power shall go to waste ; that every faculty 
shall do its utmost and reach its highest. 
I say to you with all carefulness, the no- 
blest sight this world offers is a young man 
bent upon making the most of himself. 
Alas that so many seem not to care what 
they become ; men in stature, but not yet 
born into a world of purpose and attainment, 

— babes in their comprehension of life ! A 
cigar, a horse, a flirtation, a suit of clothes, a 
night of drinking, a low theatrical or dance, 
and just enough work to attain such things, 
or got without work, — how the spirits of 
the wise, sitting in the clouds, laugh at 
them ! What an introduction to manhood 
and manly duties ! One cannot start thus 
in life, and make himself master of it, or get 
any real good out of it. A part of his folly 
may ooze out as the burdens of life press on 
him, and necessity may drive him to sober 



PURPOSE. 2T 

labor, but be will bait and stumble to tbe 
end. It is a sad thing to begin life witb 
low conceptions of it. There is no misfort- 
une comparable to a youth without a sense 
of nobility. Better be born blind than not 
see the glory of life. It is not, indeed, pos- 
sible for a young man to measure life, but it 
is possible to cherish that lofty and sacred 
enthusiasm which the dawn of life awakens. 
It is possible to say, — I am resolved to 
put life to its noblest and best use. 

If I could get the ear of every 3^oung man 
for but one word, it would be this : Blake 
the 7nost mid the best of yourself. There is 
no tragedy like wasted life, — life failing of 
its end, — life turned to a false end. 

The true way to begin life is not to look 
off upon it to see what it offers, but to take 
a good look at self. Find out wbat you are, 
how you are made up, your capacities and 
lacks, and then determine to get the most 
out of yourself possible. Your faculties are 
avenues between the good of the world and 
yourself ; the larger and more open they 
are, the more of it you will get. Your ob- 
ject should be to get all the riches and 
sweetness of life into yourself ; the method 
is through trained faculties. You find your- 



28 PURPOSE. 

self a mind : teach it to think, to work 
broadly and steadily, to serve your needs 
pliantly and faithfully. You find in your- 
self social capacities : make yourself the 
best citizen, the best friend and neighbor, 
the kindest son and brother, the truest hus- 
band and father. Whatever you are capa- 
ble of in these directions, that be and do. 
Let nothing within you go to waste. You 
also find in j^ourself moral and religious 
faculties. Beware lest you suffer them to 
lie dormant, or but summon them to brief 
periodic activity. No man can make the 
most of himself who fails to train this side 
of his nature. Deepen and clarify your 
sense of God. Gratify by perpetual use the 
inborn desire for communion with Him. 
Listen evermore to conscience. Keep the 
heart soft and responsive to all sorrow. 
Love with all love's divine capacity and 
quality. And above all let your nature 
stretch itself towards that sense of infinity 
that comes with the thought of God. There 
is nothing that so deepens and amplifies the 
nature as the use of it in moral and spiritual 
ways. One cannot make the most of one's 
self who leaves it out. 

If these general purposes are resolutely 



PURPOSE. 29 

followed, they are sure to yield as much of 
success as is possible in each given case. 

A pursuit followed in its main drift ; a 
home to contain the life ; good citizenship 
as the sum of public duties ; culture, or 
making the most of one's self, as the sum 
of personal and religious duties, — these are 
the four winds of inspiration that should 
blow through the heart of a young man , 
these are the foundations of that city of 
character and destiny which, when built, 
lies four-square, — Work, Home, Humanity, 
and Self, as made in the image of God and 
for God. 



11. 

FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 



* God divided man into men that they might help each 
other." — Sexeca. 

"A man that hath friends must show himself friendly." — 
Solomon. 

" A talent is perfected in solitude ; a character in the 
stream of the world." — Goethe. 

"Live with wolves, and you will learn to howl." — Span- 
ish Proverb. 

"Although unconscious of the pleasing charm, 

The mind still bends where friendship points the way ; 

Let virtue then thy partner's bosom warm. 
Lest vice should lead thy softened soul astray." 

TiiEOGMS, from Xtnoplwn. 



II. 

FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 

Without doubt, home and companions 
are the chief external influences that de- 
termine character. One is nearly always 
good, because it is charged with divine in- 
stincts; the other is uncertain in its char- 
acter, because it springs out of the chances 
of the world. The main feature of the 
home is love which " works no ill ; " hence 
its natural influence is favorable to good 
character. Parents for the most part in- 
culcate truth, purity, honesty, and kindness. 
With abundant allowance for mistake and 
neglect, the influence of parents and brother 
and sister is good, but outside of the home 
there is no such certainty. 

When John bids father and mother good- 
by amongst the Berkshire hills, and goes to 
Boston or New York to make his way in the 
world, his future depends with almost math- 
ematical certainty upon the character of his 



34 FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 

associates. He may have good principles 
and high purposes ; tender words of advice 
are in his ears ; his Bible lies next his 
heart, and love follows him with unceasing 
prayers ; but John will do well or ill as he 
falls amongst good or bad companions. Ed- 
ucation, ingrafted principles and tastes, re- 
membered love, ambition, conscience, — all 
these will do much for him, but they will 
not avail against this later influence. 

There are many turning-points when the 
question of success or failure is decided again 
and again. Life is a campaign, in which a 
series of fortresses are to be taken ; all pre- 
vious victories and advances may be thrown 
away by failure in the next. jSTearly the 
last of these is companionship ; if one wins 
the victory here, the reward of a prosperous 
manhood is within his reach. 

At the risk of logically inverting my sub- 
ject, I will speak first of friendship ; and I 
must beg your patience while I put a foun- 
dation under m}^ suggestions. 

If there were but one general truth that 
I could lodge in the mind of any one or all 
men, it would be this : that true life consists 
in the fulfillment of relations. We are born 
into relations ; we never get out of them ; 



FBIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 35 

all duty consists in meeting them. The 
family, the church, the state, the humanity 
at large, — these are the sources of our pri- 
mary and abiding duties, as well as of our 
happiness, — the sum-total of ethics and re- 
ligion. 

The relation of friends, though not so 
sharply defined as that of the family or the 
state, is as real and as essential to a full life. 
Emerson says : " Maugre all the selfishness 
that chills like east winds the world, the 
whole human family is bathed with an ele- 
ment of love like a fine ether." To get this 
ensphering love into form and expression 
is the office of friendship. Bacon goes so 
far as to say that " a principal fruit of 
friendship is the ease and discharge of the 
fullness of the heart." He goes on in his 
noble and wise way to name its other points, 
and nothing on the subject is better than 
his threefold statement of its uses : " Peace 
in the affections, support of the judgment, 
and bearing a part in all actions and occa- 
sions." 

It is not enough to love only our own 
family. Love is a great and wide passion, 
demanding various food and broad fields 
to range in. When one is only " a family 



36 FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 

man " he may have a sound nature, but it 
will not be a large or generous one ; and 
lie will shrink rather than expand with 
years, and sink into the inevitable sadness 
that attends old age. 

Nor is Bacon's second pomt of less impor- 
tance, — to aid one's judgment. Advice can 
hardly come from any other than a friend 
when the question involves grave issues. A 
stranger is not sufficiently interested, a rel- 
ative is blinded by excess of love, but a 
friend's advice is tempered by affection, 
while it is not overruled by the imperative- 
ness of natural instinct. There is much 
wisdom in the every-day words, " As a friend 
I advise you," for no other can advise so 
well. 

Bacon's third point — friends as helpers 
on all occasions — does not have its full 
weight until we learn that late lesson that 
man is not equal to life. There is more to 
do than one can do alone, and an unfriended 
life will be poor and meagre. It is an old 
saying that " a friend is another himself." 
If, as a mere matter of strength and re- 
source, I were to face life with the choice 
of either a fortune or friends, I would be 
wiser to choose the latter as more helpfuL 



FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 37 

Of course I regard friendship as a real and 
abiding thing, and not as that other thing 
that comes and goes with fortune. I have 
no faith in the miserable notions that the 
poor are friendless because they are poor, 
and that friends desert on the approach of 
poverty. Poverty may winnow the false 
from the true, but it does not destroy the 
wheat. The poor may be friendless, and 
even poor because they are friendless, never 
having won friends. This fine relation does 
not turn upon poverty, but upon dispo- 
sition, or temper, or the chances of life. 
Happy is he who wins friends in early life 
by true affinities 1 He multiplies himself ; 
he has more hands and feet than his own, 
and other fortresses to flee into when his 
own are dismantled by evil fortune, and 
other hearts to throb with his joy. 

Friendship is of such a nature that it is 
difficult to name rules for it ; it is its own 
law and method. So ethereal a thing can- 
not be brought under choice or rule. It 
is rather a matter of destiny. If one is 
born to have friends he will have them. 
Emerson says that one need not seek for 
friends ; they come of themselves. But 
Solomon goes deeper in his proverb : " A 



38 FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 

man that hath friends must show himself 
friendly." Let one offer to the world a 
large, generous, true, sympathetic nature, 
and, rich or poor, he will have friends, and 
he w^ill never be friendless whatever catas- 
trophes befall him. 

Not as giving rules, but rather touching 
the matter in the way of suggestion, I will 
name a few points that it is well to think 
of: — 

(1.) Cultivate the friendly spirit. If one 
would have friends he must be worthy of 
them. The bright plumage and the songs 
of birds are designed to win their mates. 
It is in vain for one to sa}^ I want friends ; 
I will go seek them. Go within rather, 
and establish yourself in friendly sympathy 
with your fellow-men ; learn to love ; get 
the helpful spirit, and above all the respon- 
sive temper, and friends will come to you 
as birds fly to their beautiful singing mates. 

(2.) Make friends early in life, else you 
will never have them. Youth is often 
moody, and keeps by itself. The very in- 
tensity with which it wakes up to individ- 
uality drives it into solitariness, where it 
morbidly feasts on the wonderful fact of 
Belfhood. There is danger also lest we be 



FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 39 

caiiglit by entertaining companions instead 
of winning congenial friends, and so start 
in life with a set of mere associates. It is 
only in the first third of our three-score 
and ten that life-long friends are made. 
Agreeable associations may be formed later, 
and now and then a friendship when there 
is great congeniality and freshness of spirit ; 
but friendship is a union and mingling, a 
shaping of plastic substances to each other 
that cannot be effected after the mould of 
life has hardened. We may touch here- 
after, but not mingle. 

(3.) Hold fast to your friends. It is one 
of the commonest regrets in after-life that 
early friendships were not kept up. Change 
of residence, neglect of correspondence or 
of holiday courtesies, some divergence of 
taste or belief or outward condition, — for 
some such cause a true friendship is often 
suffered to languish and die out. Shake- 
speare well says : — 

" I count myself in nothing else so happy 
As in a soul rememb'ring my good friends." 

And again in Hamlet : — 

" The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, 
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel." 

(4.) Make a point of haying friends 



40 FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS, 

amongst your elders. Friendsliip between 
those of the same age is sweeter, but friend- 
ship with elders is more useful, or, rather, 
they supplement each other. One is the 
wine of life ; the other is its food. The 
latter balances life, and brings the good of 
all periods down into one. It is one of the 
divinest features of human life that in this 
way there is no such thing as solitary youth 
or solitary age. Youth may get the value, 
if not the reality, of the wisdom of age, and 
age keep forever young. Theology and 
poetry assert eternal youth ; it is neither a 
dogma of one nor a dream of the other, but 
a logical realization of human sympathy 
and love. There is nothing more detesta- 
ble in American society than the drawing 
off of young people into a society of their 
own, — young people's parties and chil- 
dren's parties ! There is not only a strong 
flavor of vulgarity in it, but positive loss on 
both sides. 

(5.) Avoid having many confidants. It 
is weak ; it breeds trouble. Secrets are not 
in themselves good things, but when of ne- 
cessity they exist their nature should be 
respected. Having them, it is well to keep 
them. Avoid also the effusive habit. It is 



FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 41 

pitiable to see a man pouring himself out 
into eveiy listening ear, — mind and heart 
and body inverted, the girdle of selfhood 
thrown aside, and all the secret ways of the 
being laid open for the common foot. It 
is a yiolation of identity, a squandering of 
personality. The secretive temper is to be 
criticised ; but it is not so fatal to char- 
acter and dignity as its opposite. There 
may be times when one must speak all 
one's thought and emotion, — self is too 
small to hold the joy or grief ; but, having 
done it, get back into your citadel of self- 
hood. We never quite respect the man 
who tells us everything. Take your friends 
into your heart, but not into your heart of 
hearts ; reserve that for yourself and duty. 

(6.) Avoid absorbing and exclusive friend- 
ships. They are not wise ; they are selfish, 
and not of the nature of true friendship, — 
forming a sort of common selfhood that is 
but a double selfishness. They commonly 
breed trouble, and end in quarrel and heart- 
break. 

This matter of friendship is often re- 
garded slightingly, as a mere accessory of 
life, a happy chance if one falls into it, but 
not as entering into the substance of life. 



42 FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. ' 

No mistake could be greater. It is not, as 
Emerson saj^s, a thing of " glass threads or 
frost-work, but the solidest thing we know." 
"There is in friendship" — as Evelyn writes 
in the Life of Mrs. Godolphin — " something 
of all relations and something above them 
all. It is the golden thread that ties the 
hearts of all the world." 

It is not pleasant to toucli such a subject 
on its utilitarian side, still it is well to know 
that it is one of the largest factors of suc- 
cess not only in the social, but also in the 
commercial and political worlds. Many a 
merchant is carried through a crisis by his 
friends when the strict laws of business 
would have dropped him into ruin. It was 
Lincoln's immeasurable capacit}^ for fnend- 
ship that made his splendid career possible. 
It is this same superb quality that is pre- 
paring a like place in the hearts of the peo- 
ple for Garfield, — breaking out spontane- 
ously in all his utterances, and vindicating 
its reality by an unmistakable ring. It is 
no idle thing. Happiness, success, charac- 
ter, destiny, largely turn upon it. I will 
know more of a man from knowing of his 
friendships, than I can gain from any other 
single source. Tell me if they are few or 



FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 43 

many, good or bad, warm or indifferent, 
and I will give you a reliable measure of 
the man. 

Companionship logically goes before 
friendship, but I put it last, as the larger 
and more important relation for you to con- 
sider. One shapes itself by a law of affin- 
ity ; the other is made. Choose your com- 
panions wisely, and your friendships will 
come about naturally. 

Young men are often told that conceic 
and willfulness are their most marked quali- 
ties. I do not believe it. Their largest ca- 
pability is that of inspiration. They do not 
readily take advice ; they resent scolding, 
and utterly rebel against force, but they 
yield with the certainty of gravitation to 
personal influence. Through this capabil- 
ity all good and evil get into us. Youth is 
its period. Then heart and mind are open 
for all winds to blow through, — " airs from 
heaven or blasts from hell." A great part 
of the advantage of a college course is the 
contact for four years with a set of men 
who are scholars and gentlemen. It is im- 
possible to overestimate the inspiring influ- 
ence of contact with such men as President 
Woolsey, of Yale, and President Hopkins, 



44 FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 

of Williams. " The strongest influence I 
took away from Yale," said an able grad- 
uate, " was the spirit of the president." 
"Something in President Hopkins's letter 
drew me to Williams," said Garfield. The 
healthiest influence at work to-day in Eng- 
lish society — the most shaping in church 
and state — runs back to Dr. Arnold, of 
Rugby. He made the men that are now 
making England. Dean Stanley says of 
Iiim, " His very presence seemed to cre- 
ate a new spring of health and vigor within 
them, and to give to life an interest and ele- 
vation which dwelt so habitually in their 
thoughts as a living image, that, when death 
had taken him away, the bond appeared to 
be still unbroken, and the sense of separa- 
tion almost lost in the still deeper sense of 
a life and a union indestructible." It is 
often hard to tell where the good that is in 
us comes from, but most of it is inspired, 
— caught by contact with the good. " It 
is astonishing," says Mozley, " how much 
good goodness makes." Old John Brown 
said, " For a settler in a new country, one 
good believing man is worth a thousand 
without character." It is not the teaching 
of the pulpit or of the schools, but the men 



FRIENDS AND COJfPANIONS. 45 

wlio walk up and down the streets, that de- 
termine the character of a community. If 
the leaders of society are not noble, no drill 
of teaching or pungency of exhortation will 
arouse high thoughts in the young. 

I hesitate to touch the subject more 
closely, because it takes us into a field where 
it is nearly impossible to say anything that 
is not trite ; but if the subject does not ad- 
mit of originality, it admits of earnestness, 
I ask you to look well to this matter of 
companions. Evil influences are not resist- 
ible. They may not always overcome, but 
they inevitably hurt. 

For the sake of distinctness, let us put 
the matter into the form of rules. 

Resolutely avoid all companionship that 
falls below your taste and standard of right. 
If it offends you, reject it with instant de- 
cision ; a second look is dangerous. Pope 
is now so little read that his wise lines may 
seem new : — 

•'Vice is a monster of so friglitful mien, 
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; 
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
We first endure, then pitj, then embrace." 

Familiarity with evil — the familiarity 
of contact or intimate knowledge — never 



46 FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 

ceases to be dangerous to any one. It is 
the glory and perfection of female virtue 
that it does not know evil. The Brooklyn 
preacher debauched his congregation when 
he preaclied on the shis of New York. The 
difficulty in securing an honest and decent 
police is due to their close contact with 
vice and crime. It is not in human nature 
to endure such contact and remain pure. 
Whenever you meet a person whose knowl- 
edge of evil ways is full and close and ex- 
act, you may be sure he is not sound at 
heart. Such knowledge is not knowledge, 
for knowledge pertains to order. A phi- 
losopher in chaos would have no vocation. 
If an associate swears, or lies, or drinks, or 
gambles ; if he is tricky, or lascivious, or 
vile in his talk ; if his thoughts easily run 
to baseness, put a wide space between him 
and yourself ; give room for the pure winds 
of heaven to blow between you. But a 
closer distinction is to be made. Get at 
the temper of your associate ; or, in your 
own sensible phrase, find out the kind of 
a fellow he is, before you make a friend 
of him. On the first show of meanness or 
lack of honor, let him go. If he is without 
a high ambition, beware of him. If his 



FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 47 

thoughts run strongly to one thmg, — money, 
or dress, or society, or popularity, — he can 
do little for you. If he is cruel or negligent 
of duty to his family, if he is quick to take 
undue advantage, if he is penurious, if he 
scoffs at religion, if he derides the good, if 
he is skeptical of virtue, if he is scornful 
of good custom, you cannot afford to class 
yourself ^vith him. 

But one cannot always choose his asso- 
ciates. I do not forget how many of you 
are thrown together in the same office, or 
store, or shop, or mill, or class. But this 
does not necessitate intimate and sympa- 
thetic relations. Here is wliere you are to 
choose, and stand firm in your choice. The 
attitude of a mean or bad man is, Come to 
my level if you would be my friend ; and 
he is right. Companionship must be on a 
level morally, though it need not be intel- 
lectually. An ignorant person may be a 
harmless and even pleasant friend. Sam 
Lawson, in Mrs. Stowe's " Oldtown Folks," 
was a very good companion for man or boy, 
despite his general good -for -nothingness. 
Men may associate, and waive almost all 
other differences but that of character. The 
moral line reaches up to heaven and down 
into eternal depths. It cannot be passed 



48 FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 

and repassed. If you make companions of 
the bad, you will end in being bad. " Live 
with wolves," says the Spanish proverb, 
" and you will learn to howl." It is the 
beginning of a tragedy sad beyond thought 
when a young man enters a set of a lower 
moral tone than his oAvn, — the set that 
drinks a little, and gambles a little, and 
discusses female frailty a little ; some of 
whom steal a little from their employers 
on the score of a small salary, and drink a 
little more than the rest on the ground of a 
steadier head, and affect a little deeper 
knowledge of the world, and lie with less 
hesitation, and scoff with a louder accent : 
it is not a pleasant sight to see a young 
man cast by chance, or drawn by persua- 
sion, into such a set as this. Superiority 
of mind is not proof against it. It was the 
wild smuggler boys of Kirkoswald who led 
Burns astray. 

It is one of the worst features of modern 
society that such sets as these are every- 
where taking an actual organization — mem- 
bership and rooms and fees. Society, from 
top to bottom, is running to clubs. It is 
a matter not easily disposed of, — having a 
good and a bad side. In a complex state 
of society, such forms of social life will be 



FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 49 

created. But when the clubs are organized 
on a basis of drink and cards and " a good 
time generally," there is little question as 
to their influence. They destroy more than 
moral principles ; they wreck manhood and 
health and high purjoose and self-respect. 
A young man may enter such a club, but 
no man comes ont of it. Manhood evap- 
orates under this organized pressure of in- 
anity and Tice, and leaves something fitter 
to creep than to walk, — " beastly transfor- 
mations," who 

"iN'ov once perceive their foul disfigurement, 
But boast themselves more comely than before." 

But let us get over to the positive and 
better side of our subject. I make as a last 
suggestion that you associate as much as 
possible with persons of true worth and no- 
bility of character. The main use of a great 
man is to inspire others. There is a truth 
parallel to the doctrine of Apostolic Suc- 
cession by the laying on of hands, which, 
to my mind, is better than the doctrine. 
The succession of all high and noble life is 
through personality. Seek always the su- 
perior man. If you are already in a calling, 
get amongst those who excel in it. Every 
professional man will tell you that he can- 
4 



50 FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 

not meet one of low grade in his calling 
without injuiy, nor one high up without 
fresh stimulus. It is well to get near men 
of reputed energy and w^n-th. The fasci- 
nation that draws us to the great is deep 
and divine ; it is a call to share their great 
noss, — the divine way of distributing it to 
all. Get close to men of energy, and see 
how they work, — to men of tliought, and 
catc'li their spirit and method ; get near the 
refined and cultivated in mind and man- 
ners, and feel their charm. The influence 
nearest that of Omnipotence upon a young 
man is tliat of a noble, intelligent, refined 
woman ; not one who may become his wife, 
but one oUler and out of all such question. 
The friendship of such a woman, Steele says, 
is equal to a liberal education. 

But if you are cut off from this world of 
inspiring influence, if those about you are 
dry and dull and commonplace, seek the 
companionship you need in books : fellow- 
ship with the great spirits of history; dream 
with the poets ; think with the pliilosophers ; 
exult with martyrs ; triumph with heroes ; 
overcome with saints. Indeed, books are 
among the best of companions ; but of that 
hereafter. 



III. 

MANNERS. 



"High thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy." — Sidney. 

"The compliments and ceremonies of our breeding should 
recall, however remotely, the grandeur of our destiny." — 
Emkksox. 

"Love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous." — St. Paui* 

*' Who misses or who wins the prize ? 
Go, lose or conquer as you can; 
But if you fail, or if you rise, 
Be each, pray God, a gentleman." 

Ej)ilv<jut to Dr. Birch and his Pupils. 



III. 

MANNERS. 

Perhaps there is no better starting- 
point in this subject than the one most re- 
mote from its real centre, — our national 
manners. The foreign critics tell us that 
we are rapidly improving in our behavior ; 
we are too conscious of the need to resent 
the patronizing comment, and silently wait 
for the sure coming of that type of man- 
ners — higher than has yet been realized — 
when our institutions have fully ripened the 
character of the people. 

In the externals of behavior we are in 
advance of the last generation. The im- 
mense development in taste and art that 
has come about through foreign travel and 
world-expositions has a correspondence in 
manners. Uncouthness of dress, roughness 
of speech, and the general barbarity of 
manners that prevailed in large sections of 
the country have largely passed away. The 



54 MANNERS. 

salutations, respect for another's personal- 
ity, tlie care of the person, the tones of the 
voice, and the use of language, — all are 
better than they were. Is there also an 
improvement of feeling and mutual rela- 
tion ? The external, in the main, is indica- 
tive of what is within. Great masses of 
people are not hypocrites. The kindlier 
address shows a kinder and more equal 
spirit. The deference of a century ago wjis 
the offspring of aristocracy ; that, indeed, 
has passed away with the dying out of its 
source. But if we no longer bow down be- 
fore our fellows, we entertain for them a 
truer and more rational respect. To go a 
little closer into the matter, the masses 
have greatly improved in manners, but the 
class that used to be regarded as aristo- 
cratic and specially well-bred has deterio- 
rated, as was to be expected. The with- 
drawal of the deference of the lower classes, 
as our institutions began to be felt, threw 
them into confusion. The old-time aristo- 
crat — and a very noble figure he was — is 
consciously out of place and relations ; his 
manners suffer in consequence, and now, 
like Portia's English suitor, he " gets his 
behavior everywhere." 



MANNERS. 55 

But we must not infer that we are yet 
a people of refined manners. Dr. Bush- 
nell, forty years ago, said that emigration 
tended to barbarism. We are a nation of 
emigrants ; the greater part of us, for two 
hundred years, have lived in the woods, and 
the shadows of primeval forests still over- 
hang us. There must be more intelligence, 
more culture, a more evenly distributed 
wealth, a denser population, and a fuller 
realization of our national idea, which is 
also the Christian idea, — personality, — 
before we can claim to be a well-bred peo- 
ple. In Europe, the good manners of the 
great percolate down to the masses. One 
consequently hears and sees there a deli- 
cacy of behavior and gentleness of address 
not common here. It is, however, largely 
external and a matter of imitation. We 
have few such outstanding examples, and 
whatever of attainment we have is genuine 
and from within. We are destined to see 
on this continent a form of manners more 
genuinely refined and noble than the world 
has yet known. Just now we are in an 
open place between the going out of aris- 
tocratic or feudal habits and ways and the 
coming in of a culture and behavior based 



56 3IJXXERS. 

on equality and mutual respect. It must 
be confessed that we are without great con- 
spicuous examples of the kind of gentleman 
that is to be looked for in this country. 
Washington was undoubtedly a very true 
and noble gentleman ; but he was not the 
American gentleman of the future, being 
essentially English. With certain abate- 
ments and additions in minor respects, Lin- 
coln must be regarded as coming nearer our 
true type. A President who called to his 
cabinet a man who had publicly insulted 
him by use of the most opprobrious epithet 
the language offers, and appointed to the 
chief-justiceship another who spoke of him 
with habitual contempt, showed qualities of 
character that we find in no other great 
American. 

But let us get nearer our subject. Every 
young man desires above all else to be re- 
garded as a gentleman. None of us can 
bear any other imputation. You may ac- 
cuse one of violating the entire decalogue 
with less offense than if you tell him he is 
not a gentleman. Here is something very 
deep and weighty. What is this that so 
outweighs every other good word and esti- 
mate ? So fine a thing necessarily has 



many counterfeits ; and so we will search it 
with definitions. 

The word undoubtedly comes from the 
Latin gens^ meaning tribe or family. Hence 
all the one-sided and incomplete notions 
that a gentleman is a man of fami]}^ It is 
a good thing to be well born, with inher- 
ited tastes and traditions ; but birth does 
not make the gentleman. It is unfortu- 
nate that, etymologically, the word does 
not come from gentle and man. The world 
would have been better if it had enter- 
tained such a conception of the highest 
type of man, for the epithet nearly covers 
the whole of the character. Julius Hare, 
himself a fine illustration of his definition, 
says: "A gentleman should be gentle in 
everything ; at least in everything that de- 
pends upon himself, — in carriage, temper, 
construction, aims, desires. He ought, there- 
fore, to be mild, calm, quiet, temperate ; 
not hasty in judgment, not exorbitant in 
ambition, not overbearing, not jDroud, not 
rapacious, not oppressive." Ruskin makes 
the leading traits of a gentleman to be fine- 
ness, sensitiveness, and sympathy, each in- 
volving the other. Professor Leiber, who 
has written on the subject in a manly way, 



6.8 MANNERS. 

S'dys: "The word gentleman signifies that 
character which is distinguished by strict 
honor, self-])ossession, forbearance, generous 
as well as relined feelings, and polished de- 
portment, — a character to which all mean- 
ness, explo.siv(^ irritability, and peevish fret- 
fulness are alien ; to which, consequently, a 
generous candor, scrupulous veracity and 
essential truthfulness, courage, both moral 
and physical, dignity and self-respect, liber- 
ality in thought, argument, and conduct are 
habitual, and have become natural. It im- 
plies also refinement of feelings and lofti- 
ness of conduct to the dictates of morality 
and the precepts of religion, — a long, hard 
sentence, but well worth our study." Mr. 
Calvert says: " The gentleman is never un- 
duly familiar ; takes no liberties ; is chary 
of questions ; is neither artificial nor af- 
fected ; is as little obtrusive upon the mind 
or feelings of others as on their persons; 
bears himself tenderly towards the weak 
and unprotected ; is not arrogant ; cannot 
be supercilious; can be self-denying without 
struggle ; is not vain of his advantages, ex- 
trinsic personal ; habitually subordinates 
his lower to his higher self ; is, in his best 
condition, electric with truth, buoyant with 



MANNERS. 59 

veracity." Mr. Emerson, who writes on 
the theme with keenest inward sympathy, 
as well as discrimination, says : " The gen- 
tleman is a man of truth, lord of his own 
actions, and expressing that lordship in his 
behavior ; not in any manner dependent and 
servile either on persons, or opinions, or 
possessions. Beyond this fact of truth 
and real force, the word denotes good nat- 
ure or benevolence, — manhood first, and 
then gentleness." Sir Philip Sidney — 
himself the ideal gentleman ■ — put the whole 
matter into one pregnant phrase : " High 
thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy." 
You will notice that in the concejDtion of a 
gentleman which these authors give the 
moral element predominates; not family, 
or station, or manners, but qualities. They 
do, indeed, take on and draw after them 
external forms, for the in and the out must 
at last be alike ; but the essential condition, 
that which makes one a gentleman, is moral 
qualities. 

Following this unanimous hint, we will 
try to get these qualities into some order. 
We name, — 

1. Truth. One who we^l knew described 
a perfect man as one who "speaketh the 



60 MANXEnS. 

truth in liis lieavt," — inward trutlifulness, 
oiitwir.J xLTiicity; this goes before all else 
in making- up the gentleman. Calvert says: 
"A gcnileniau may brush his own slioes or 
clothes, or mend or make tliem, or roughen 
his hands with the helve, or foul tliem with 
dye-work or iron-work ; but he must not 
foul his mouth with a lie." A lie makes 
relations impossible. When two j^ersons 
meet, there can be no true conversation un- 
less it is thoroughly understood that each 
is himself: I am I, and you are you; I say 
what is true, and 1 believe that you say 
what is true. This is the foundation of all 
human intercourse. Nor can a man long bo 
himself who does not speak the truth. He 
duplicates and reduplicates himself, loses 
all sense of personality, and becomes a mere 
phenomenon, flickering amongst men with 
a false light, trusted by none, and at last 
is lost even to himself; for a liar finally 
ceases to believe himself ; his memory, 
judgment, and even senses fail to bring him 
true reports. There is no girdle that will 
hold a man together and make him a per- 
son but the truth. And so it enters funda- 
mentally into th^ highest type of personal 
character. Amongst those who wear the 



MANNERS. 61 

title of gentleman, it takes precedence of 
all else, even kingl}^ dignit}^ Charles I. 
said to the Commoners, " You have not only 
the word of a king, but of a gentleman." 
When Nicholas of Russia desired to assure 
tlie English ambassador that he was speak- 
ing the truth, he said, " I desire to speak 
with you as a gentleman." The reason that 
some occupations traditionally exclude those 
following them from the rank of gentlemen 
is because they foster lying. In certain 
forms of trade, where the values are un- 
known, or variable, or obscure, the tempta- 
tion to lie is so strong that it becomes nearly 
universal, and those following such callings 
are presumed to be unworthy of the society 
of gentlemen. Truthfulness is the chastity 
of men ; when once sacrificed, caste is for- 
ever lost. A gentleman not only speaks the 
truth, but is truthful. " He never dodges," 
says Emerson. He looks squarely at person 
or thing, because he proposes to see things 
and persons as they are. And being attuned 
to truth within, his voice will have the pitch 
of truth ; the ver}^ poise of his body and 
sway of his members will have a certain 
directness born of truth. We name, — 
2. Kindness of heart, — " The willing- 



62 ^fAXNERS. 

ness and faculty to oblige," Emerson calls 
it. If one have not this, he may step aside. 
If truth is the foundation of good manners, 
kindness is the superstruetuiv, — that which 
most appears and constitutes them. The 
phraseology of refined society is expressive 
of love and interest. We begin letters with 
a term of endearment, and we used to end 
them with an assurance of humble service. 
Those were fine old e very-day words, — now 
used too little, — '' I am at your service," 
"What are your commands?" The gen- 
tleman exists to help ; he has no other voca- 
tion. If you desire to cultivate yourselves 
in this matter, let your husbandry be in this 
direction. A spirit of universal good- will, 
a generous heart, and an open hand, — be 
strong in these, and you may claim this 
badge of highest nobility. But if you are 
exclusive, if you lack heart, if your hand is 
kept closed except when pried open by 
shame or stout appeal, if you go about in a 
spirit of caution and reserve and secret dis- 
dain of all but your set, you are out of our 
high category ; neither money, birth, nor 
sleekness can smuggle you in. The immense 
mistake in this matter is that the tokens of 
good-will are made partial and exclusive. 



MANNEES. 63 

There are enough to love and help their 
own, but such consideration gives no true 
title to the rank of gentleman. It is the 
very essence of gentlemanhood that one is 
helpful to the weak, the poor, the friend- 
less, the humble, the miserable, the de- 
graded. A gentleman will not be too cau- 
tious where he bestows his favors. The 
economists preach against street beggars, 
but your Charles Lamb cannot be kept 
from dropping frequent pennies into their 
hats. He is not too critical of the testi- 
monials of the shipwrecked sailor, and he 
sees the wan face and rags of poverty more 
than he listens to its improbable tale. He 
does not mind whose bundle he carries, if so 
he relieves some aching arm ; nor how low 
the door-way he enters, if he can carry cheer 
across the threshold. 

(3.) If truth is the foundation and kind- 
ness is the superstructure of the gentleman, 
honor is his atmosphere, — a hard thing to 
define, but a very real thing as we see it, or 
the lack of it. It is akin to truth, but is 
more, — its aroma, its flower, its soul. It is 
that which makes a gentleman's word as 
good as his bond. We get its exact mean- 
ing when it is used in connection with fe- 



64 MANNERS. 

male virtue. It may be defined as an exqui- 
site and imperative self-respect. Honor is 
an absolute and ultimate thing. It knows 
nothing of abatement, or change, or degree. 
It governs with a noble and inexorable ne- 
cessit}'. The man of honor dies sooner than 
break its liglitest behest. To those who do 
not know it it is less than the summer 
cloud ; to those who have it adamant is not 
so solid. The man of honor may be trusted 
to the uttermost ; he does not know tempta- 
tion. It is a mail that prevents even the 
aiming of arrows. Charles Sumner thought 
there was but little bribery in Washington ; 
he had never seen anything of it. The 
man of honor lias no price. Mr. Smiles, in 
one of his admirable books, says that Wel- 
lington was once offered half a million for a 
state secret not of any special value to the 
government, but the keeping of which was 
a matter of honor. '* It appears you are ca- 
pable of keeping a secret," he said to the 
otficial. *^ Certainly," he rephed. "Then so 
am I," said the general, and bowed him out. 
Honor is offended even at the thought of 
its violation. It is the poetry of noble man- 
hood, — 

•' That away, 
Men are but gilded loam or painted clay." 



IIANNEES. 65 

Unliappy is he who comes to years of man- 
hood and finds it weak and dull ; unhap- 
pier still is he who has lost it by some de- 
liberate act. He can never again be quite 
the same man. Tarnished honor in man 
or woman is the one stain that cannot be 
washed out. The best word upon it in all 
literature, I think, is in that fine poem of 
Burns's, " Epistle to a Young Friend : " — 

" But where ye feel your honor grip, 

Let that aye be your border ; 
Its slightest touches, instant pause; 

Debar a' side pretences, 
And resolutel}' keep its laws, 

Uncaring consequences." 

(4.) We put next delicacy, — fineness of 
fibre. It is made up of quick perception 
and fine feeling. It leads one to see in- 
stantly the line beyond which he may not 
go ; to detect the boundary between friend- 
liness and familiarity, between earnestness 
and heat, between sincerity and intolerance 
in pressing your convictions, between style 
and fussiness, between deference and its ex- 
cess. It is the critic and mentor of the 
gentlemanly character. It tells him what 
is coarse and unseemly and rude and ex- 
cessive. It warns him away from all doubt- 
ful acts and persons. It gives little or no 



66 3fAXXi:RS. 

reason, — it is too fine for analysis and log- 
ical process, — but acts like a divine in- 
stinct, and is to be heeded as divine. A 
man may be good without it, but he will 
lack a nameless grace ; he will fail of high- 
est respect ; he will miss the best compan- 
ionship ; he will make blunders that hurt 
him without his knowing why ; he will feel 
a reproach that he cannot understand. It 
is this quality more than any other that 
draws the line in all rational society. Men 
often wf)nder why they are shut out of cer- 
tain grades of society ; they are well dressed, 
intelligent, moral, rich, amiable, — still the 
door is shut. Let them, if they can, meas- 
ure their fibre, and they will usually get at 
the cause. It is this quality that decides 
matters of dress, the length and frequency 
of visits ; that discriminates between the 
shadow and substance in all matters of eti- 
quette. It determines the nature and num- 
ber of questions one may ask of another, 
and sees everywhere and always the invisi- 
ble boundary that invests personality. 

(5.) I name next respect and consider- 
ation for others, — something more than 
kindness and less ethereal than delicacy, but 
entering quite as largely and imperatively 



MANNERS. 67 

into tlie every-day life of the gentleman. 
You perceive at once that it is of the very 
nature of our faith, — not self, but another. 
To consider tenderly the feelings, opinions, 
circumstances, of others, — what is this but 
Christian ? 

There is one respect in which our An- 
glo-Saxon race — especially when the Nor- 
man strain is thin — is simply brutal in its 
manners, namely, its treatment of the lu- 
dicrous when it involves pain. A person, 
old or young, on sitting down, misses the 
chair and comes to the floor, and the room 
screams with laughter. What could be more 
essentially cruel and barbarous ? A public 
speaker stammers, and the audience giggles. 
They would be kinder, he thinks, if they 
would pelt him with the foot-stools. A 
mistake, a peculiarit}^ an accident, often 
involves a ludicrous element, but it is well 
to remember that a sense of the ludicrous 
is not the loftiest of emotions. The simple 
question in such cases is not. How does the 
looker-on feel ? but. How does the other per- 
son feel ? If there were a litany of good 
manners, it might well begin, From gig- 
gling, good Lord, deliver us. The word 
qar will not often be found on these 



68 MANNERS. 

pages, but we would like to gather up all 
the meaning and emphasis lodged in it 
and pour them upon this habit of inconsid- 
erate laughter at the misfortunes of otliers. 
Let us hasten to the pleasanter side of our 
subject. The great historical illustration 
of this grace of consideration, never to be 
passed by, is that of Sidney, at the battle 
of Zut|)hen, handing the cup of water, for 
which he longed with dying thirst, to the 
wounded soldier beside him : " He needs it 
more th;in I." 

"How far that little candle throws his beams ! " 

Like it is the incident of Sir Ralph Ab- 
ercrombie, — told by Smiles, — who, when 
mortally wounded, found under his head the 
blanket of a private soldier, placed there 
to ease his dying pains. " Whose bhmket 
is this ? '* " Duncan Roy's." " See that 
Duncan Roy gets his blanket this very 
night," said Sir Ralph, and died without 
its comfort. Smiles gives another fine in- 
stance of this divine grace, all the better 
from its spontaneity. Two English nav- 
vies in Paris saw, one rainy day, a hearse, 
with its burden, winding along the streets, 
unattended by a single mourner. Falling 



MANNERS. 69 

in behind, they followed it to the ceme- 
tery. It was only sentiment, but it was 
fine and true. Such sentiment leads a cap- 
tain to go down with his ship ; the fire- 
man to pass through flame; the soldier to 
go on the forlorn hope. When spontaneous, 
it shows that our nature is sound at the 
core ; when wrought into a conscious habit, 
it reveals the divine glory that every life 
may take on. 

One imbued with this high quality never 
sees personal deformity or blemish. A lame 
man could easily classify his friends as to 
their breeding by drawing a line between 
those who ask how it happened and those 
who refrain from all question. I say dis- 
tinctly, the gentleman never sees deform- 
ity. He will not talk to a beggar of his 
rags, nor boast of his health before the sick, 
nor speak of his wealth amongst the poor ; 
he will not seem to be fortunate amongst 
the hapless, nor make any show of his vir- 
tue before the vicious. He will avoid all 
painful contrast, always looking at the thing 
in question from the stand-point of the other 
person. 

The gentleman is largely dowered with 
forbearance. The preacher will not dog- 



70 MANXEIiS. 

matize nor indulge in personality since his 
audience has no chance to re})ly. The law- 
yer will not browbeat the witness — no, not 
even to win his case — if he is a gentleman. 
The physician is as delicate as purity itself, 
and as secretive as the grave. There is no 
finer touch-stone of the gentleman than 
the forbearing use of power or advantage 
over another : the employer to his men, the 
husband to his wife, the creditor to his 
debtor, the rich to the poor, the educated 
to the ignorant, the teacher to pupils, the 
prosperous to the unfortunate. 

" Oh, it is excellent 
To have a giant's strength ; but it is tyrannous 
To use it like a giant." 

(6.) How far are manners to be made a 
matter of rule ? is a question you will inev- 
itably ask. From within out — is the fun- 
damental law in manners ; still there is an 
external view of the subject quite worth 
heeding. 

There is a certain fme robustness of char- 
acter that is prone to pay little heed to the 
" thou shalt " and " thou shalt not " of so- 
ciety; and there is a certain spirituality 
that says, " Make your own rules." There 
is much truth in both positions, but it is 



JIANNEES. 71 

delicate ground to tread on ; one needs to 
be very sure-footed and quick-eyed to avoid 
falls. Upon the whole, and for the most of 
us, it is better there should be a code of so- 
cial laws, well understood and rather care- 
fully observed ; at least, one should always 
have them at hand, ready for use. There 
are many things that help to make life easy 
and agreeable that are not taught by intui- 
tion. Nor could we live together in mutual 
convenience unless we agreed upon certain 
arbitrary rules as to daily intercourse. If 
it is well to have these common habits and 
interchanges of courtesy, it is well to have 
them in the best form, even to punctilious- 
ness. Without doubt, what are called the 
manners of society are not only a part of 
gentlemanhood, but are extremely conven- 
ient. I am not about to indicate these 
rules, but I may suggest that in all matters 
of dress, of care of the person, of carriage, 
of command of the features and voice and 
eyes, and of what are called the ways of 
good society, it is of great use to be well in- 
formed. They will not take you one step 
on the way, but they will smooth it, and 
the lack of them may block it altogether. 
The main dependence must be on the things 



72 MANNERS. 

we have considered. If one is centrally 
true, kind, honorable, delicate, and consid- 
erate, he will almost without fail have man- 
ners that will take him into any circle 
where culture and taste prevail over folly. 
Still, this inward seed needs training. It 
should levy on all graceful forms, on prac- 
tice and discipline, on observation, on fash- 
ion even, and make them subserve its native 
grace. Watch those of excellent re2)utation 
in manners. Keep your eyes open when 
you go to the metropolis, and learn its grace ; 
or, if you live in the city, when you go to 
the counti-y, mark the higher quality of 
simplicity. Catch the temper of the great 
masters of literature : the nobility of Scott, 
the sincerity of Thackeray, tli<' heartiness of 
Dickens, the tenderness of MacDonald, the 
delicacy of Tennyson, the grace of Long- 
fellow, the repose of Shakespeare. 

Manners in this high sense, and so 
learned, take one far on in the world. 
They are irresistible. If you meet the 
king he will recognize you as a brother. 
They are a defense against insult. All 
doors fly open when he who wears them 
approaches. They cannot be bought. 
They cannot be learned as from a bookj 



MANNERS. 73 

they cannot pass from lip to lip ; they come 
from within, and from a within that is 
grounded in truth, honor, delicacy, kind- 
ness, and consideration. 

These pages may fall under the eyes of 
some readers along with the Christmas-tide. 
No theme is more appropriate to it. The 
spirit of these days is alive with tenderest 
courtesy. A gentleman can have no better 
watchword than that sung at Bethlehem: 
" Peace on earth, good-will to men." 

" Come wealth or want, come good or ill, 
Let old and young accept their part, 
And bow before the awful will, 
And bear it with an honest heart. 

" Who misses or who wins the prize ? 
Go, lose or conquer as you can ; 
But if you fail, or if you rise. 
Be each, pray God, a gentleman. 

"A gentleman, or old or young! 

(Bear kindly with my humble lay.) 
The sacred chorus first was sung 
Upon the first of Christmas days ; 

''The shepherds heard it overhead, 
The joyful angels raised it then : 
Glory to God on high, it said. 
And peace on earth to gentle — men." i 

1 Epilogue to Dr. Birch and his Young Friends. 



IV. 

THRIFT. 



" I"A.>;iv>iny, whether public or private, means the wise 
management of laln^r; and it moans it mainly in three senses: 
namely, first, applying your labor rationally ; secondly, prt- 
MTving its produce carefully; lastly, dUtributinrj its produce 
seasonably." — Ruskix. 

" In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold 
not thy hand; for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, 
either this or that, or whether they shall be alike good." — 

SOLOMOK. 

*• The virtues are economists." — Emersos. 

" No man can guage the value, at this present critical time, 
of a steady stream of young men, flowing into all profes- 
sions and all industries, who have learned resolutely to speak 
in a society such as ours : 'I can't afford.' " — Thomas 
Hughes. 



IV. 

THRIFT. 

We have so long been told that we are a 
thrifty people that we go on assuming it as 
a fact without fresh examination. Thrift is 
more apt to be a phase than a characteristic 
of the life of a nation, — a habit than a prin- 
ciple. That we are thrifty because our an- 
cestors were no more follows than that the 
ship that sails out of the harbor stanch 
and tight will be sound when she returns 
from a long and stormy voyage. It was not 
from any instinct or natural trait that our 
forefathers were thrifty, but from a moral 
necessity. The Celt is naturally thrifty. 
The Anglo-Saxon is thrifty only when there 
is some strong motive behind or before him ; 
he is thrifty for a reason ; and this certainly 
is the best foundation of the virtue. The 
early settlers found themselves here in cir- 
cumstances out of keeping with their char- 
acters, — rich in one and poor in the other, 



78 THRIFT. 

and SO sci au.uL uvercoming the discrepancy. 
Their h\rge and noble conceptions of man 
required that he should be well housed and 
cared for. Dr. Holmes says : " I never saw 
a house too fine to shelter the human head. 
Klfgance fits man." When Nero built his 
palace of marble and ivory and gold, lie 
said, " This is a fit house for a man." The 
scientists tell us that environment and lii'*' 
stand in a relation of necessity ; they cer- 
tainly stand in the relation of fitness. The 
strong, divinely nourished common sense of 
our fathers perceived tliis, and they hus- 
banded as earnestly as they prayed. They 
could give up all for a cause, and take no 
thought for the morrow, if the occasion re- 
quired, but they knew how to discriminate 
between the rare occasion of total self-sacri- 
fice and the conduct of every-day life. Con- 
sequently thrift early got a strong hold. 
New England has had two great insj)iring 
minds, — Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin 
Franklin. Far apart in spirit and charac- 
ter, they formed a grand unity in their in- 
fluence. One taught religion, the other 
thrift ; one clarified theology, the other 
taught the people how to get on. Edwards 
tided New England over the infidelity that 



THRIFT. 79 

preyailed in the last century; Franklin 
created the wealth that feeds society to-day 
by inspiring a passion for thrift. Hence, 
for a century, irreligion and beggary were 
equally a reproach, and still in no country 
in the world is the latter held so vile. 

But these two formative influences are 
evidently waning. Nor is it to be altogether 
regretted. Both were too austere to be per- 
petually healthful ; neither regarded the 
breadth and scope of human nature. The 
danger is lest the ebb be excessive, and its 
method be exchanged for others not so sure 
and wholesome. Thrift pertains to details. 
It is alike our glory and our fault that we 
are impatient of details. Our courage 
prompts to risks, our large-mindedness in- 
vites to great undertakings ; both some- 
what adverse to thrift, — one essentially, 
and the other practically, — because great 
undertakings are for the few, while thrift 
is for all. Large enterprises make the few 
rich, but the majority prosper only through 
the carefulness and detail of thrift. To 
speak of it is a Scylla and Charybdis voy- 
age, — while shunning the jaws of waste, 
there is danger of drifting upon the rocks 
of meanness. I say frankly, if either fate 



80 TuniFT. 

is to befall us, I ^vould rather it were not 
the last. 

I begin by insisting on the importance of 
having money. Specuhite and preach about 
it as we will, the great factor in society is 
money. As the universe of worlds needs 
some common force like gravitation to hold 
them together and keep them apart, so so- 
ciety requires some dominating passion or 
purpose to hold its members in mutual re- 
lations. Money answers this end. With- 
out some such general purpose or passion, 
society would be chaotic; men could not 
work together, could iichieve no common 
results, could have no common standards 
of virtue and attainment. Bulwer says : 
'* Never treat money affairs with levity; 
money is character." And indeed character 
for the most part is determined by one's re- 
lation to money, f'ind out how one gets, 
saves, spends, gives, lends, borrows, and be- 
queathes money, and you have the charac- 
ter of the man in full outline. " If one 
does all these wisely," says Henry Tay- 
lor, "it would almost argue a perfect 
man." Nearly all the virtues play about 
the use of money, — honesty, justice, gen- 
erosity, charity, frugality, forethought, self- 



THRIFT. 81 

sacrifice. The poor man is called to cer- 
tain great and strenuous virtues, but he has 
not the full field of conduct open to him as 
it is to the man of wealth. He may under- 
go a very deep and valuable discipline, but 
he will not get the full training that a rich 
man may. St. Paul compassed the matter 
in knowing how to abound as well as how 
to suffer want. Poverty is a limitation all 
the way through ; it is good only as in all 
evil there is " a soul of goodness." Mr. 
Jarvis says, '•'• Among the poor there is 
less vital force, a lower tone of life, more ill 
health, more weakness, more early death." 
If poverty is our lot, we must bear it brave- 
ly, and contend against its chilling and sti- 
fling influences ; but we are not to think of 
it as good, or in any way except as some- 
thing to be avoided or gotten rid of, if honor 
and honesty permit it. I wish I could fill 
every young man who reads these pages 
with an utter dread and horror of poverty. 
I wish I could make you so feel its shame, 
its constraint, its bitterness, that you would 
make vows against it. You would then 
read patiently what I shall say of thrift. 
You may already have a sufficiently ill 
opinion of poverty, but you may not un- 



derstaiul that one is already poverty-stricken 
if his habits are not thrifty. Every day I 
see young men — well dressed, with full 
purses and something of inheritance await- 
ing them — as plainly foredoomed to pov- 
erty as if its rags hung about them. 

The secret of thrift is forethought. Its 
process is saving for use ; it involves also 
judicious spending. The thrifty man saves: 
savings require investments in stable and 
remunerative forms; hence that order and 
condition of things that we call civilization, 
which does not exist until one generation 
passes on the results of its labors and sav- 
ings to the next. Thus thrift underlies 
civiliauition as well as personal prosperity. 
The moment it ceases to act society ret- 
rogrades towards savagery, the main feat- 
ure of which is absence of forethought. A 
spendthrift or idler is essentially a savage : 
a generation of them would throw society 
back into barbarism. There is a large num- 
ber of young men — chiefly to be found in 
cities — who rise from their beds at eleven 
or twelve ; breakfast in a club-house ; idle 
away the afternoon in walking or driving ; 
spend a part of the evening with their fam- 
ilies, the rest at some place of amusement 



THRIFT. 83 

or in meeting tlie engagements of society, 
bringing up at the club-house or some gam- 
bling den or place of worse repute ; and 
early in the morning betake themselves to 
bed again. They do no work ; they read 
but little ; they have no religion ; they are 
as a class vicious. I depict them simply to 
classify them. These men are essentially 
savages. Except in some slight matters of 
taste and custom, they are precisely the in- 
dividuals Stanley found in Central Africa, 
with some advantages in favor of the Afri- 
can. Some years ago, Mr. Buckle startled 
the reading world by putting the Roman 
Catholics of Spain and the high Calvinists 
of Scotland in the same class, as alike in 
the generic trait of bigotry, thqugh differ- 
ing in matters of belief. Precisely in the 
same way, and with the same logical cor- 
rectness, these idlers are to be put in the 
same category with savages. They live un- 
der the fundamental characteristic of sav- 
agery, namely, improvidence. Our young 
man of leisure has a rich father, and the 
African has his perennial banana, and, upon 
the whole, rather a surer outlook. 

The chief distinction between civiliza- 
tion and barbarism turns on thrift. Thrift 



84 THRIFT. 

is the builder of society. Thrift redeems 
man from savagery. 

What are its meth(Hls ? 

(1.) I name the first in one word, — save. 
Thrift has no rule so imperative and with- 
out exception. If you have an allowance, 
teach youi'self on no account to exhaust it. 
The margin between income and expendi- 
ture is sacred ground, and must not be 
touched except for weightiest reasons. But 
if you are earning a salary, — it matters 
not how small, — plan to save some part of 
it. If you receive seventy-five cents per 
day, live on seventy; if one dollar, spend 
but ninety ; you save thirty dollars a year, 
— enough to put you into the category of 
civilization. But he who spends all must 
not complain if we set him down logically 
a savage. Your saving is but little, but it 
represents a feeling and a purpose, and, 
small as it is, it divides a true from a spu- 
rious manhood. 

Life in its last analysis is a struggle. 
The main question for us all is. Which is 
getting the advantage, self or the world ? 
When one is simply holding his own, 
spending all he earns, and has nothing be- 
tween himself and this '' rough world," he 



THRIFT. 85 

in a fair way to be worsted in the battle. 
He inevitably grows weaker, while the piti- 
less world keeps to its pitch of heavy exac- 
tion. 

There is a sense of strength and advan- 
tage springing from however slight gains 
essential to manly character. Say what 
we will about "honest poverty," — and I 
would say nothing against it, for I well 
know that God may build barriers of pov- 
erty about a man, not to be passed, yet 
within which he may nourish a royal man- 
hood, — still the men who escape from pov- 
erty into independence wear a nobler mien 
than those who keep even with the world. 
Burns is the poet of the poor man, and has 
almost glorified poverty, but he never put 
into any of his verses more of his broad 
common sense than into these : — 

"To catch Dame Fortune's golden smile, 

Assiduous wait upon her; 
And gather gear by ev'ry wile 

That 's justified by honor: 
Not for to hide it in a hedge, 

Nor for a train attendant ; 
But for the glorious privilege 

Of being independent." 

It is a great part of this battle of life to 
keep a good heart. The prevailing mood 
of the poor is that of sadness. Their gayety 



86 THRIFT. 

is forced and fitful. Their drinking luibits 
are the cause and result of tlieir poverty. 
There is no repose, no sense of adequacy, 
no freedom, after one has waked up to the 
fact that he is poor. It takes but little to 
redeem one from this feeling. The spirit 
and purpose of saving thrift change the 
whole color of life. It is not necessary to 
have already made accumulations to secure 
your own or others' indursement of your 
manliness. The direction you face will bo 
suliicient. I recall the homely story of the 
young man who applied to the father of 
"the dearest girl in the world" for permis- 
sion to marry, and, in answer to the search- 
ing and inevitable question (don't forget 
that you must meet it) as to his resources 
and ability to supjKjrt a wife, was obliged 
to confess that he had no money, but de- 
clared that he was "chock-full of day's 
work." Money was only a question of 
time. 

It can hardly be expected that you will 
look ahead twenty or forty years, and real- 
ize the actual stings of poverty and the 
sharper stings of thriftless habits; but it 
may be expected that you will see why it is 
wiser and more manly to save than to spend. 



THRIFT. 87 

There is a certain fascinating glare about 
the young man who spends freely; whose 
purse is always open, whether deep or shal- 
low ; who is always ready to foot the bills ; 
who says yes to every proposal, and pro- 
duces the money. I have known such in 
the past, but as I meet them now I find 
them quite as ready to foot the bills, but 
generally unable to do so. I have noticed 
also that the givers, and the benefactors of 
society, had no such youthhood. This pop- 
ular and fascinating young man is in reality 
a very poor creature ; very interesting he 
may be in the matter of drinks, and bill- 
iards, and theatre tickets, and sleigh-rides, 
and clothes, and club-rates ; but when he 
earns five or eight or ten hundred dollars 
a year, and spends it chiefly in this way, 
would charity itself call him anything but 
a fool ? The boys hail him a royal good 
fellow, and the girls pet him, but who re- 
spects him ? I do not write of him here 
with any hope of bettering him ; he is of 
the class of whom it is said that an experi- 
ence in a mortar would be a failure. I speak 
to a higher grade of intelligence. The pain- 
ful fact, however, is to be recognized, that 
the saving habit is losing ground. The 



88 THRIFT. 

reasons are evitleiit: city and country are 
one. The standards of dress, anmsements, 
and life generally are set in the richer cir- 
cles of the metropolis, and are observed, at 
whatever cost, in all other circles. I can do 
nothing to offset these influences but to re- 
mind you of nobler methods. I can only 
say that to spend all one earns is a mistake ; 
that while to spend, except in a severe and 
judicious way, weakens character, economy 
dignifies and strengthens it. 

The habit of saving is itself an education. 
It fostei-s ever)' virtue. It teaches self-tle- 
nial. It cultivates a sense of order. It 
trains to forethought, and so broadens the 
mind. It reveals the meaning of the word 
business, which is something very different 
from its routine. One may know all the 
forms of business, even in a practical way, 
without having the business characteristic. 
Were a merchant to choose for a partner a 
young man thoroughly conversant with the 
business, but having expensive, self-indul- 
gent pei*sonal habits, or one not yet versed 
in its details, but who knows how to keep 
a dollar when he has earned it, he would 
unhesitatingly take the latter. The habit 
of saving, while it has its dangers, even 



THRIFT. 89 

fosters generosity. The great givers have 
been great savers. The miserly habit is 
not acquired, but is inborn. Not there b'es 
the clanger. The divinely-ordered method 
of saving so educates and establishes such 
order in the man, and brings him into so in- 
telligent a relation to the world, that he be- 
comes a benefactor. It is coarse thinking 
to confound spending with generosity, or 
saving with meanness. 

(2.) I vary the strain but little when I 
say, Avoid a self-indulgent spending of 
money. 

The great body of young men in our 
country are in the receipt of such incomes 
that the question whether a thing can be 
afforded or not becomes a highly rational 
inquiry. With incomes ranging from a dol- 
lar or less per day to a thousand dollars a 
year, there is room for the play of that wise 
word, afford. I think it tends to shut out 
several things that are very generally in- 
dulged in. I have no intention of saying 
anything here against the pleasant habit of 
smoking, except to set it in the light of this 
common-sense word, afford. Your average 
salaries are, say, five hundred dollars. If 
you smoke cigars, your smallest daily allow- 



90 THRIFT. 

ance will be two, costing iit least twenty- 
cents, — I assume that you do not degrade 
yaursolves by using the five-cent article, — 
more than seventy dollars a year. If it were 
fifty, it would be a tenth of your salary. 
The naked question for a rational being to 
consider is. Can I afford to spend a tenth 
or seventh of my income in a mere indul- 
gence ? What has common sense to Siiy to 
the proportion ? Would not this amount, 
lodged in some sound investment, contrib- 
ute rather more to self-respect ? Ten years 
of such expenditure represent probably a 
thousand dollars, for there is an inevitable 
ratio of increase in all self-indulg««nt habits; 
fifty years represent five thousand, — more 
than most men will have at sixty-five, who 
began life with so poor an understanding of 
the word afford. Double these estimates, 
and they will be all the truer. I do not 
propose in these pages to enter on a crusade 
against tobacco, but I may remind you that 
the eye of the world is fixed on the tobacco 
habit with a very close gaze. The educators 
in Europe and America are agreed that it 
impaii-s mental energy. Life-insurance com- 
panies are shy of its peculiar puLse. Ocu- 
lists say that it weakens the eyes. Physi- 



THRIFT. 91 

cians declare it to be a prolific cause of 
dyspepsia, and hence of other ills. The 
vital statistician finds in it an enemy of vir- 
ility. It is asserted by the leading authori- 
ties in each department that it takes the 
spring out of the nerves, the firmness out of 
the muscles, the ring out of the voice ; that 
it renders the memory less retentive, the 
judgment less accurate, the conscience less 
quick, the sensibilities less acute ; that it 
relaxes the will, and dulls every faculty of 
body and mind and moral nature, dropping 
the entire man down in the scale of his pow- 
ers, and so is to be regarded as one of the 
wasters of society. I do not undertake to 
aflSrm all these propositions, but only to 
show how the social critics of the day are 
regarding the subject. 

The habit of drinking is so nearly par- 
allel with smoking in its relation to thrift 
that it need not detain us. The same co- 
gent word afford applies here with stronger 
emphasis, because the drinking habit in- 
volves a larger ratio of increase. Waiving 
any moral considerations involved in beer 
drinking, the fact of its cost should throw it 
out. The same startling figures we have 
used are more than true here. It is not a 



92 THRIFT. 

thrifty habit, and uo young man who has 
his ^vay to make in the world is entitled to 
an unthrifty habit. It is idle to repeat the 
truisms of the theme. We have heard till 
we cease to heed that drink is the great 
waster of society. Great Britain spends 
annually two hundred and fifty millions of 
dolhirs in drink. Our own statistics are 
nearly as bad. It is the one thing — even 
if it does not reach the proportions of a vice 
— that keeps more men out of a compe- 
tence than all other causes combined. The 
twin habits of smoking and beer-drinking 
stand for a respectable property to all who 
indul<;c in them, — a thing the greater part 
will never have, though they have had it. 
" The Gods sell all things at a fair price,** 
says the proverb ; but they sell nothing 
dearer than these two indulgences, since 
the price is commonly the man himself. 

The simple conclusion that common sense 
forces upon us is that a young man front- 
ing life cannot afford to drink ; he cannot 
afford the money ; he cannot atford to bear 
the reputation, nor run the risks it involves. 

I refer next to the habit of light and 
foolish spending. Emerson says, " The 
farmer's dollar is heavy; the clerk's is light 



THRIFT. 93 

and nimble, leaps out of his pockets, jumps 
on to cards and faro tables." But it gets 
into no more foolish place than the till of 
the showman, and minstrel troupe, and the- 
atrical company. I do not say these things 
are bad. When decent, they are allowable 
as an occasional recreation, but here, as 
before, the sense of proportion must be ob- 
served ; not what I like, but what I can 
afford. 

It has been said that no one should carry 
coin loose in the pocket, as too easily got 
at. I Avould vary it by applying the Span- 
ish proverb, " Before forty, nothing ; after 
fort)^ anything." If one has been careful 
in early life he may be careless after. At 
first let the purse be stout and well tied 
with stout strings ; later there need be no 
purse, but only an open hand. 

It seems to be an excess of simplicity to 
suggest that a young man should purchase 
nothing that he does not actually want, 
nothing because it is cheap ; to resist tho 
glittering appeals of jewels and gay clothing 
and delicate surroundings. These will come 
in due order. 

(3.) It is an essential condition of thrift 
that one should keep to legitimate occupa- 



'.14 THRIFT. 

tions. There is no thrift in chance ; its 
centriil idea is order^ — a series of causes 
and etYects along the line of which fore- 
thought can look and make its calculations. 
Speculation makes the few rich and the 
many poor. Thrift divides the prizes of 
life to those who deserve them. If the 
great fortunes iire the results of specula- 
tions, the average competencies have their 
foundation and permanence in thrifty ways. 

(4.) Have a thorough knowledge of your 
affaii-s ; leave nothing at loose ends ; be ex- 
act in every business transaction. The 
chief source of quarrel in the business 
world is what is termed " an understand- 
ing," ending commonly in a misunderstand- 
ing. It is not ungenerous or ignoble al- 
ways to insist on a full, straight-out bar- 
gain, and it falls in with the thrifty habit. 

It is a very simple matter to name, but 
the habit of keeping a strict account of per- 
sonal expenses down to the penny has great 
educational power. Keep such a book, tab- 
ulate its items at the close of the year, — so 
much for necessaries, so much for luxuries, 
so much for worse than luxuries, — and 
listen to what it reports to you. 

(5.) Debt is the secret foe of thrift, as 



THRIFT. 95 

vice and idleness are its open foes. It may 
sometimes be wise for one to put himself 
under a heavy debt, as for an education, or 
for land, or for a home ; but the debt-habit 
is the twin brother of poverty. 

(6.) Thrift must have a sufficient motive. 
There is none a young man feels so keenly, 
if once he will think so far, as the honor- 
able place assigned to men of substance. 
No man is quite respectable in this nine- 
teenth century who has not a bank account. 
True or false, high or low, this is the solid 
fact, and, for one, I do not quarrel with it. 
As most of us are situated in this world, we 
must win this place and pay its price. The 
common cry of " a good time while we are 
young " is not the price nor the way. Mr. 
Nasmj^th, of England, an inventor and 
holder of a large fortune made by himself, 
says, " If I were to compress into one sen- 
tence the whole of my experience, and offer 
it to young men as a rule and certain re- 
ceipt for success in any station, it would be 
comprised in these words. Duty first, pleas- 
ure second ! From what I have seen of 
young men and their after progress, I am 
satisfied that what is called ' bad fortune,' 
' ill luck,' is, in nine cases out of ten, simply 
the result of invertinej the above maxim." 



96 THRIFT. 

" Serve a noble disposition, though poor," 
says George Herbert; "the time comes when 
he will repay thee." 

We cannot properly leave our subject un- 
til we have referred to spending, for thrift 
consists in the putting out, as well as the 
ingathering, of money. It decides how, and 
to what extent, we shall both spend and 
save. We must leave ample room for the 
play of generosity and honor; we must 
meet the demands of church and home and 
community with a wise and liberal hand; 
we must preserve a keen and g(jverning 
sense of stewardship, never forgetting the 
ultimate use of money, and the moral and 
intellectual realities that underlie life. This 
matter of thrifty saving is purely instrumen- 
tal, simply to bring us into circumstances 
where self-respect, a sense of independence 
and of usefulness, are possible ; or, putting 
it finer, we save to get into the freedom 
of our nature. Were the wisdom of tin- 
whole subject gathered into one phrase, it 
would be, When young, save ; when old, 
spend. But each must have something of 
the spii-it of the other; save generously, 
spend thriftily. 

If I were to name a general principle to 



THRIFT. 97 

cover the whole matter, I would say, 
Spend vj^ivard, that is, for the higher 
faculties. Spend for the mind rather than 
for the body; for culture rather than for 
amusement. The very secret and essence 
of thrift consists in getting things into 
higher values. As the clod turns into a 
flower, and the flower inspires a poet ; as 
bread becomes vital force, and vital force 
feeds moral purpose and aspiration, so 
should all our saving and out-go have re- 
gard to the higher ranges and appetites 
of our nature. If you have a dollar, or a 
hundred, to spend, put it into something 
above the average of your nature that you 
may be attracted to it. Beyond what is 
necessary for your bodily wants and well- 
being, every dollar spent for the body is 
a derogation of manhood. Get the better 
thing, never the inferior. The night sup- 
per, the ball, the drink, the billiard table, 
the minstrels, — enough calls of this sort 
there are, and in no wise modest in their 
demands, but they issue from below you. 
Go buy a book instead, or journey abroad, 
or bestow a gift. 

I have not urged thrift upon you for its 
own sake, nor merely that you may be kept 



98 THRIFT. 

from poverty, nor even for the ease it 
brings, but because it lies near to nil tlie 
virtues, and antagonizes all the vices. It is 
the conserving and protecting virtue. It 
makes soil and atmosphere for all healthy 
growths. It favoi-8 a full manhood. It 
works against the very faults it seems to 
invite, and becomes the reason and inspira- 
tion of generosity. 



V. 

SELF-RELIANCE AND 
COURAGE. 



"And having done all, to stand. Stand, therefore.*' 

St. Paul. 

""llill tu w\:ie man has said) is paved with good inten- 
tion.*.' riuck up the stones, ye sluggards, and break the 
devil's head vrith them." Gueuet at Truth. 

"A mas«, that is to »ay, collective mediocrity." — John 
SruAinr Miix. 

** Tbif aboT« alt : to thine ownitelf be true ; 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou caust not then be false to any man." 



V. 

SEI^F-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 

So far we have spoken chiefly of conduct ; 
in this chapter we speak of that interior 
thing that we call selfJiood or personality. 
To get a clear, full sense of it is a great 
achievement, leading, as it does, to this 
quality or state of self-reliance. No man 
is self-reliant, or has intelligent courage, 
until he has come to a thorough sense of 
himself ; not in any way of conceit or self- 
comphicency, but by a deliberate survey and 
examination of himself, as if from the out- 
side. 

I think we may all agree with Humboldt 
that the aim of man should be to secure 
" the highest and most harmonious develop- 
ment of his powers to a complete and con- 
sistent whole ; " or, as we said in the first 
chapter, "to make the most of himself." 
This is the specific work of civilization, to 
get the individual out of the mass and exalt 



102 SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 

Ilim into personality. In savagery one is 
the duplicate of another. In civilization 
there is variety, or rather individuality, in 
the exact degree of tlie civilization. It 
comes about, as Mr. Mills tells us, througli 
" freedom and variety of situations." Free- 
dom takes off the restraints, so that what- 
ever is in the man comes out. Civilization 
offers the variety of situations needful for 
confirming the individual traits. Thus 
there will be the most of strong, distinct 
character where there is the largest free- 
dom and the most complex civilization. In 
simpler form, freedom gives us a chance ; 
civilization stimulates us. 

Other things, indeed, help to bring out 
individuality. Necessity spurs a man, and 
opjK)rtunities allure him. Both have had 
full play in this country. Poverty on one 
hand, and ungathered wealth on the other 
hand, — these have largely created the 
American type. Hence in a new country 
almost every man is what is called ''a 
character." I think I noticed in Califor- 
nia a sharper individuality than I observe 
in New England. The Englishman feels 
uncomfortably the broad and pronounced 
diversity of character he finds here, and we 



SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 103 

are obliged to confess that English society 
is just a little insipid from lack of it. 

Religion also influences individuality. 
A superstition, a fixed form, a false faith, 
or a false rendering of the true faith, re- 
presses individuality. Idolaters and bigots 
resemble one another and are herd-like, but 
a faith like Christianity that is full of free- 
dom, and is throughout keyed to deliver- 
ance, stimulates individuality. All along it 
has blossomed out into great original char- 
acters, — poets, statesmen, inventors, navi- 
gators, explorers, philanthropists. It was 
the secret of the Reformation that it restored 
to Christianity its normal order of freedom, 
long interrupted ; when the pressure was 
taken off, all Europe burst into a brilliancy 
of thought and discovery such as the world 
had never seen. The literature of the 
Elizabethan age outranks that of Greece, 
not in perfection of form, but because it is 
instinct with a freedom and individuality 
not to be found in the ancients. Shake- 
speare may not be so great an artist as 
iEschylus, but he stimulates character as 
the Greek did not. I would like to remind 
young men in these days of insinuating, 
slighting infidelity, that the glory and force 



104 SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 

of modern civilization is tlie direct and 
logical outcome of Christianity. Its root- 
idea is deliverance. It fust freed the luiman 
mind and then inspired it. It is something 
more than a matter of church and Bible; it 
is a life-giving spirit ; it is an atmosphere ; 
it is the soul of the world. 

Kace also has much to do with individu- 
ality. The blood that has force and cour- 
age in it produces the widest variety of 
character. It is significant that Christianity 
allies itself most readily to the strongest 
races, entering into them as quicksilver 
mingles with gold. The strong race opposes 
it at first with the stoutest will, and cpies- 
tions it with the profoundest interrogation, 
but still accepts it, because, at bottom, they 
sympathize. A weak race debases Chris- 
tianity when it receives it, it cannot stand 
up under its stout duties ; but the strong 
nice takes it at its full measure. 

This Angl«j-Saxon bhjod of ours, with its 
refining strain of Norman, is the best in the 
world. It contains the virtues, and holds 
the vices as alien. It honors marriage and 
the home ; it speaks the truth ; it is hon- 
est ; it is rich, comprehensive, charged with 
the widest possibilities. Its inmost quality 



SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 105 

is force^ hence its clearest exponent is indi- 
viduality. It tends to erect each man into 
a full-rounded person, whence conies lib- 
erty ; for liberty is but the assertion of 
personality, with its rights and obligations. 
Such it has been of old and hitherto ; let 
us hope that it will never lose this qual- 
ity. Some one, I have forgotten who, has 
pointed out the significant fact that the god 
of our Scandinavian ancestors was not a 
Zeus hurling thunderbolts, but a Thor wield- 
ing a hammer ; the Greek god shed arrows 
of fate ; the Scandivian beat down obsta- 
cles. An old Norseman, not mythologic, 
had for a crest a pick-axe, with the motto, 
" Either I will find a way or make one." 
And another said, "I believe neither in 
idols nor demons; I put my sole trust in 
my own strength of body and soul." 

Just because the main quality of this 
blood is force^ it retains this characteristic. 
Not every yonth, with this forceful blood 
in his veins, carries Thor's hammer in his 
hand, but it is hidden somewhere about him. 
To get it into the strong right hand, where 
it can be wielded against the obstacles in 
the way of manhood, is the business before 
us. 



106 SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 

Wlien one rides through Italy and sees 
the brawny peasants stretched at ease by 
the roadside, one reflects that they have a 
justification in their blood. But a lazy, list- 
less, forceless Anglo-Saxon is a contradiction 
to his own nature. 

The most notable exliil)itions of this 
blood, I think, are to be seen in its emigra- 
tions. A factory stretching across a valley 
indicates energy, but it does not reveal the 
particular quality of self-reliance as does 
the emigration of a man from the East to 
the frontier. The ancient em ignitions were 
in masses; the Anglo-Saxon does not wait 
for his neighbor, but takes counsel witli 
himself, gjithcrs together his family, and 
starts. Men do few braver things. 1 have 
never been prouder of my race than when 
I have come across, perched upon a swell 
of endless, desolate prairie in Nebraska, or 
hidden in some remote glen of the Sierras, 
the rough dwelling of a white-skinned set- 
tler, come there in the mighty strength of 
his self-reliance to build a home and ham- 
mer out a fortune with this same hammer 
of Thor. He is not a Mexican wandering 
with his herds, or " white trash " crowded 
to the frontier, but one of Bacon's " found- 



SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 107 

ers." All English history is behind him 
and in jiim. He nofc only wins a living, but 
subdues nature to his use and taste, and 
makes soil and tree and ore tributary to his 
grandh'-coneeived selfhood. He is a per- 
son — quite conscious of the fact ; he wants 
what belongs to a man, and, by the aid of 
Thor's hammer, he will get it. Put a few 
of these Anglo-Saxons down anywhere on 
the continent, and forthwith they bring all 
civilization to their doors. 

Another feature of this civilization is its 
expansive character, its tendency to com- 
plexit}^ adding something new and perma- 
nent every year. What it will attain to 
when it has cleared all traditional obstacles 
out of its way, and got into full freedom, is 
beyond conception, because we have no con- 
ception of what is in man. 

The thing I wish to get before young men 
is, that they are summoned by inheritance 
to a very lofty type of self-reliance and 
manhood. But we sometimes fail of our 
birthright. Other influences may work 
against inborn tendency and force, and all 
good things need culture. Necessity is the 
spur to self-reliance ; a noble pride and self- 
respect are its atmosphere. Where there is 



108 SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 

wealtli tlie spur is apt to lose its sharpness, 
and often self-respect is smothered under an 
accuniuhitiun of social influences. 

My first direct word on tlio subject will 
be an appeal to young men to realize, each 
one for himself, that he is a person. 

It is not every man who has said to him- 
self, ** I am I ; I am not another, but I 
am myself." There are many who have 
not yet ascertained whether they are them- 
selves or some one else, and are quite as 
often one as the other ; many who do not 
get themselves detached from the mass of 
humanity, but live and act out of the com- 
mon stock of thought and feeling. When 
one agrees with everything I say, however 
carelessly I am talking, there is really but 
one of us. When Hamlet likened the 
cloud to a camel, a weasel, and a whale, 
and Polonius assented, there w;us but one 
person in the colloquy ; Polonius was no- 
body. To be a person, to have opinions 
and respect them, — this is something at 
once necessary and diflieult, because at the 
same time a young man should heed and 
value the opinions of others, and steer wide 
of the slough of conceit. At the one ex- 
treme is the young man who agrees with 



SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 109 

ever^'body, and goes with the crowd ; at 
the other extreme is one who knows every- 
thing and has settled all questions. The 
latter may be the more odious at present, 
but he will turn out better. His mates will 
kick a part of his folly out of him, and con- 
tact with the world will wear away the 
rest, leaving him a substantial person, while 
the other, having no inherent shape, will be 
moulded over and over to the end. He is 
pious or wicked, Republican or Democrat, 
liberal or bigot, according to the strongest 
influence; the better reason has little weight 
with him. Without doubt, one should hold 
himself open to all good influences, but the 
main question, after all, is whether one is a 
mind to be convinced, or simply a mass to 
be moulded and attracted. Every public 
speaker knows that those who flutter about 
him with readiest assent are not the ones 
best worth convincing. I have little fear 
for the self-opinionated young man. The 
kind wise world has rods in keeping that 
will take the conceit out of him. I fear for 
him who goes with the crowd and draws his 
opinions and sentiments from the common 
stock. I hate to hear a young man say, 
"They all do it," — a very shabby and 



110 SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 

odious phrase. I hate to see a young man 
jump into the current that happens to be 
nearest, or just now most impetuous, — 
whether it be good or bad, byciele or Bern- 
hardt, — and float with it for sake of the 
company. It were better to be borne by 
some stream of native feeling or personal 
conviction, or to stand stock still while the 
mindless crowd sweeps by. One should al- 
ways question the prevailing craze, what- 
ever it is, till he finds out if it has a reason 
for him in it. I think if the President elect 
were now in college he would be the first or 
the last to provide himself with a byciele ; 
in either decision he would act out of a per- 
sonal reason. It is true that men move in 
masses, that there is a gregarious instinct, 
that great passions and purposes often make 
whole populations as one man, but they are 
movements that need to be carefully scru- 
tinized. Those that have swept over our 
country have not been very creditable, — a 
dancer, a singer, an author who abused us, 
a political adventurer, and just now an act- 
ress whose son addresses her as " Mademoi- 
selle via mere^ Taglioni and Jenny Lind 
and Dickens and Kossuth and Bernhardt 
do not represent the highest forces in the 



SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. Ill 

moral and intellectual world, but each has 
forced us to wear national sackcloth. I do 
not urge stolid insensibility to a prevail- 
ing enthusiasm. There is no objection to 
marching in a procession and throwing one's 
cap in air, but it is imperative that one 
should know why he does it. Still, march- 
ing in a procession is not the noblest way. 
One admires rather the self-poise of Kant 
who kept at his books while the cannon of 
Napoleon were sounding in his ears. Napo- 
leon might be a very grand phenomenon, 
as he admitted, but he — Kant — was also 
a phenomenon that he felt bound to re- 
spect. As a rule, resist the gregarious 
habit ; suspect the crowd, and before you 
march in companies of whatever sort, find 
out if you are marching to please yourself 
or the captain. There is a great deal of or- 
ganization and association of this sort, for 
the delectation of the leaders at the expense 
of subordinates. It is well to say of them, 
" I will consult myself on" this matter ; I 
will find out if it is agreeable and wise for 
this person that I am." 

The heaviest charged words in our lan- 
guage are those two briefest ones. Yes and 
No. One stands for the surrender of the 



112 SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 

\\\\\ tlie other for denial ; one for gratifi- 
cation, tlic other for character. Phitarch 
says that " the inhabitants of Asia come to 
be vassals to one only, for not having been 
able to pronounce one syllable, which is 
No." A stout No means a stout character ; 
the ready Yea means a weak one, gild it as 
we may. 

Practically, an attitude something like 
this is wise : when a proposal is made, 
consider it probable that there is as much 
reason for refusing as for assenting. Will 
you ride with me, drink with me, play with 
me? For such questions and all others 
have the No as convenient as the Yes. In- 
deed, when one thinks of the power of fash- 
ion and custom, it seems well to have 
the No somewhat readier. The vices are 
hardly more the result of appetite than of 
custom. There have been periods and com- 
munities in which nearly all were pure and 
temperate ; it was the custom. The thing 
to be feared for young men at present is 
the general understanding of what is cus- 
tomary in the habits of certain circles of 
their number. There is fearful power in 
those four little words, '' They all do it." 
To resist the crowd, to hold the scales of 



SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. Il8 

right and wrong in your own hand, to re- 
alize that whole masses may go wrong, — 
that common custom may be vile, to stand 
erect and within the inclosure of your self- 
respect, this is a prime feature of manhood. 

We must now look somewhat into the 
methods of the culture of this brave qual- 
ity. 

(1.) Education, of course, is its essen- 
tial condition. The ignorant herd together, 
think, feel, act alike ; but your trained man 
suspects the crowd. He feels its encroach- 
ments on his personality. He fears lest it 
may steal his decision away from him by 
brute force. He is sufficient to himself, and 
stands on his self-grounded reasons and 
habits. But while this process of educa- 
tion is going on that is to bring us into full 
self-reliance, we must help it in special 
ways. 

(2.) Secure for yourself some regular 
privacy of life. As George Herbert says, 
" By all means, use sometimes to be alone." 
God has put us each into a separate body. 
We should follow the divine hint, and see 
to it that we do not lapse again into the 
general flood of being. Many persons can- 
not endure being alone ; they are lost un- 



114 SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 

less tliorc is a clatter of tongues in their 
ears. It is not only weak, but it fosters 
weakness. The gregarious instinct is ani- 
mal,— the sheep and deer living on in us; 
to be alone is si)iritual. AVe can have no 
clear personal judgment of things till wo 
are somewhat separate from them. ^Ir. 
Webster used to say of a diflicult question, 
" Let me sleep on it." It was not merely 
for morning vigor, but to get the matter at 
a distance where he could measure its pro- 
portions and see its relations. So it is well 
at times to get away from our world — 
companions, actions, work— in order to 
measure it, and ascertain our relations to it. 
The moral use of the night is in the isola- 
tion it brings, shutting out the world from 
the senses that it may be realized in 
thought. • It is very simple advice, but 
worth heeding. Get some moments each 
day to yourself ; take now and tlu-n a soli- 
tary walk ; get into the silence of thick 
woods, or some other isolation as deep, and 
suffer the mysterious sense of selfhood to 
steal upon you, as it surely will. Pythago- 
ras insisted' on an hour of solitude every 
day, to meet his own mind and learn what 
oracle it had to impart. 



SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 115 

(3.) I name a very delicate point when I 
say, Cultivate a sense of personal dignity, 
— have bounds to familiarity. JSFoli me 
tangere — touch me not — is the utterance 
of a divine dignity. There is a subtle law 
by wliich greatness and excellence create a 
sense of separation. Refined manners for- 
bid excessive familiarity, not simply as good 
manners, but because they contribute to 
selfhood. Hence the well-bred scrupulous 
respect each other's persons, down to the 
smallest particular. The very touch of the 
hand is instinct with delicate respect. No 
self-respecting man will suffer his body, or 
mind, or soul to be slapped on the back. 
Thus instinct and manners unconsciously 
guard personalit}^, and secure to it room 
and air for growth. 

(4.) Do not fear unpopularity. I do 
not say, court it, but, do not think much 
about it, nor dread it, if it comes through 
the assertion of your manhood. There is 
no time when the pressure of opinion is so 
strong as in early life. It is something fear- 
ful in its power in college, and wherever else 
young persons are brought into close and 
daily contact. When a young man says 
of another, " He is popular," he says what 



116 SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 

he considers the best possible thing ; but 
if '* unpopuhir," the worst. I do not deny 
that there may bo some reality of truth in 
this ; but I protest against the slavishness 
it begets. To court popularity, to unduly 
dread the loss of it, is a denial of selfhood. 
It puts the standard of judging in another 
instead of retaining it in yoursi'lf. You like 
the good oj)inion of otliers ; it is well ; but 
tii*st have a good opinion of yourself. It is 
well to respect others ; very true ; but first 
respect yourself. " If I do so and so, what 
will others think of me?" Hut what will 
you think of yourself ? "I shall lose my 
place in society, if I refuse to do this or 
that." But is it worse than being turned 
out of yourself ? "I fear I shall be unpop- 
ular." Fear rather being unpopular with 
yourself, for the soul of man is a sort of 
community ; conscience, taste, self-respect, 
will, honor, judgment, — these are its citi- 
zens, whose suffrages are more to be desired 
than of the whole world beside. 

To make popularity a guide is to come 
into middle life weak, and into age crippled. 
Self evaporates under the process, and 
when the flattering voices have died out, — 
there being no longer anything to appeal 



SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 117 

to them, — emptiness and weariness are all 
that remain. There is no old age that is 
so horrible as that of one who has lived on 
popular applause. Even religion cannot 
comfort one who has frittered away his 
selfhood in a steady strife after popularity ; 
the very mechanism by which it operates is 
gone. 

(5.) Keep steadily before you the fact 
that all true success depends at last upon 
yourself, — trite to weariness, I acknowl- 
edge, but one of those eternal truths to be 
kept before us as we heed gravitation and 
appetite. The tritest is always the truest. 

By nature we are weak; our destiny is 
to become strong ; but we shun destiny, and 
lean to our first characteristic. Who will 
help me? What can I depend on ? The&e 
are our first natural questions. But we do 
not get on the track of success until we drop 
all such questioning, and begin to realize 
that we must depend upon ourselves. By 
success I mean a full manhood and its in- 
herent peace. This is not possible until 
one has planted himself upon his own pow- 
ers and begun to work from them. He 
may have money, friends, chances, good fort- 
une, but that which underlies achievement 



118 SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 

is the ability of the man himself. If suc- 
cess comes from without, it will be fictitious, 
and will fail to make returns of haj^piness. 
When it flowers out of one's energies, it is 
a vital and ministering thing. Sir Fowell 
Buxton — as substantial a citizen as Eng- 
land has produced in the generation — 
said, ** The longer I live, the more I am 
certain that the great difference between 
men, between the feeble and the powerful, 
the great and the insignificant, is energv, 
invincible detcrminatiun. That quality will 
do anything that can be done in this world ; 
and no talents, no circumstances, no oppor- 
tunities, will make a two-legged creature a 
man without it.'* In the same strain, Presi- 
dent Porter: *' Energy, invincible determi- 
nation, with a right motive, are the levers 
that move the world." 

It is hardly necessary to say that self is 
the only certain reliance. Money, family, 
friends, circumstances, — these come and go 
on the uncertain tide of time. The old 
Norseman was right : on neither idols nor 
demons, upon nothing but the strength of 
his own body and soul, would he dei^end. 
There must be, however, a self to depend 
on. Self is not a whim ; it is not im- 



SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 119 

pulse, nor ambition, nor flux of motives, but 
a substantial person, grounded in intelli- 
gence and will and moral sense. 

I have not distinguislied between self- 
reliance and courage, because they so inter- 
penetrate each other. Courage may be re- 
garded as the refinement of self-reliance, — 
the spirit-side to that of which self-reliance 
is the mind-side. When one says, Be self- 
reliant, he speaks to the will and judg- 
ment ; when one says, Be courageous, he 
addresses the heart and spirit. 

I would have you regard courage as near- 
ly the supreme quality in character. One 
may get rich without it ; one may live a 
" good easy " life without it, but one can- 
not live a full and noble life without it. It 
is the quality by which one rises in the line 
of each faculty ; it is the wings that turn 
dull plodding into flight. It is courage es- 
pecially that redeems life from the curse of 
commonness. 

Before leaving the subject, I would like 
to set it distinctly against a disposition — 
growing somewhat common, I fear — to set- 
tle down into a purposeless enjoyment of 
the present: a life without earnestness or 
aspiration ; a life that aims only at " hav- 



120 SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 

ing a good time," — a weak and beggarly 
phrase. The essential characteristic of this 
life is that it hicks courage, — the fine high 
spirit that disdains the common life, and 
dares the future for a nobler one ; " the 
dauntless spirit of resolution," Shake- 
speare calls it. Is it true that young men 
are regarding life less iileally ? — that some 
mist, bred of prosperous times, has come 
into the air, obscuring the stai-s, and shut- 
ting the vision up to what is near and pal- 
pable ? Is Thor's hammer gone from our 
hands ? Wo will hope that it is but a mist 
that just now seems to be blinding the eyes 
of many, and that we shall again see young 
men drawn on by noble ambitions and high 
ideals. 

It would be most incomplete to speak of 
courage and not refer to it in the hedged-in 
fields of life. 

The burdens of life do not always fall 
upon the mature and aged. Life often takes 
on its most grievous and binding form in the 
young. Poverty, toil, sickness, imperfect 
education, premature responsibility, many 
of you, I know, bear these burdens. " What 
is all this to me ? I can attempt nothing 
great or high ; I have no future but to keep 



SELF-RELIANCE AND COURAGE. 121 

right on ; forme to aspire and plan is folly." 
It may be so, but there is one thing you can 
do, and it is the best thing any man can 
do in this world, — you can keep up good 
heart. This is courage, indeed : to look 
into a dull future and smile ; to stay bound 
and not chafe under the cords ; to endure 
pain and keep the cheer of health ; to see 
hopes die out and not sink into brutish de- 
spair, — here is courage before which we 
may pause with reverence and admiration. 
It is so high that we link it with divine 
things, carrying it quite beyond the sphere 
of any earthly success. 



VI. 
HEALTH. 



^ r,l» the mills of God grind slowly, 

Yet they grind exceeding snmll ; 
Though with patience He stands waiting, 

With exactness grinds be all." 

L0X0FELL<0W. 

" A sound heart is the life of the Hesh." 

SOUIMON. 

"Though I look old, yet I am strong aud lusty; 
For in my youth I never did apply 
Hoi and nbellious liquors in my blood; 
Nor did not with unba-xhful fort-head woo 
The means of weakness and debility; 
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, 
Frosty but kindly." 

As You Like It, ii. 3. 

'•Now, good digestion wait on appetite 
And health on both! " 

Macbtth, iii. 4- 



VI. 



The questions now coming into prom- 
inence pertain chiefly to social Science. 
While there are political and religions 
questions that still vex and interest society, 
it is plainly to be seen that the eye of the 
world is fixed on this matter of living ; 
an art it is getting to be called. It has 
never yet seriously engaged the attention of 
the people. It is a new subject, and not 
yet fairly before us. The Greeks gave great 
heed to the individual body, and the Ro- 
mans secured personal cleanliness by their 
vast system of baths, but neither seem 
to have had any conception of the public 
health ; hence, with all their fine training 
and care of the body, their cities were sub- 
ject to pestilence, and the average of life 
remained at a low point. The only success- 
ful attempt yet made to connect hygiene 
with the social order was made by Moses, 



126 HEALTH. 

who interwove its requiroments with those 
of religion. If this critical generation could 
be diverted for «i moment from the "mis- 
takes of Moses" to some thought of his 
measures that were not mistakes, it wouM 
find itself in possession of some very sug- 
gestive facts. No nation has been so ex- 
empt from contagious and hereditary disease 
as tlie Jews, or can show vital statistics so 
favorable, or oftener blossoms out into a 
great original mind. There is no question 
but this racial vitality and toughness and 
exuberance is due to certain hygienic rules 
that Moses made effective and lasting by 
connecting them with religion, where, in- 
deed, they belong. But, aside from the 
Jews (and in how many respects are they 
an exceptional people !), the art of health 
is a new subject. It is a singular fact that 
when men first reflectively examined them- 
selves they began with their moral nature, 
then passed to their minds, and that is as 
far as they have got. Strange as it seems, 
it is the natural order, and shadows a tre- 
mendous truth, — morals first, mind next, 
body last. It is the eternal and fit order, 
Aristotle mapped out philosophy and morals 
in lines the world yet accepts in the main, 



HEALTH. 127 

but he did not know tlie difference between 
the nerves and the tendons. Rome had a 
sound system of jurisprudence before it had 
a physician, using only priestcraft for heal- 
ing. Cicero was the greatest lawyer the 
world has seen, but there was not a man in 
Rome who could have cured him of a colic. 
The Greek was an expert dialectician when 
he was using incantations for his diseases. 
As late as when the Puritans were enun- 
ciating their lofty principles, it was gener- 
ally held that the king's touch would cure 
scrofula. Governor Winthrop, of colonial 
days, treated "small-pox and all fevers" 
by a powder made from " live toads baked 
in an earthen pot in the open air." And 
even now, in New England, where we split 
hairs in theolog}^, and can show a philos- 
opher for every square mile, at least one 
half of the treatment of disease is empir- 
ical ; that is, there is no ascertained relation 
between the remedy and the sickness ; it is 
largely a matter of advertisement and pre- 
tense. But a new day is dawning. Legis- 
lation is crowding the quack into the back- 
ground, and the Board of Health is coming 
to the front. 

The old Greeks put health so high as to 



128 HEALTH. 

deify it. Hygeiawas a goddess, young and 
smiling and beautiful. We are catching 
glimpses of her hiughing face, and erelong 
we shall deify her. It is a part of our sin 
that we are sick ; it is a jxirt of religious 
duty to be well. 

I say all this to young men because it is 
well that they should be awake to the new 
phases of society that are coming on. The 
Bjjecial subjects to which intelligent men 
should have their eyes open are those per- 
taining to social science, the sanitary con- 
dition of towns and cities, all matters of 
drainage, ventilation, water-supply, house- 
building, as well iis matters pertaining to 
personal health and vigor. If any educated 
young man is looking about for a hobby, let 
me suggest that here is one that he can ride 
to better purpose than any other now to be 
laid hold of. 

But the personal side of the subject is the 
one we have before us. Evidently, nothing 
can be more pei*sonal, more literally and 
strictly vital, than bodily health. It is the 
fii-st and the perpetual condition of success. 
In any enterprise there are primary and 
secondary conditions affecting the result. 
In making a voyage it is necessary first of 



HEALTH. 129 

all to have a ship that will float and hold 
together till the port is gained ; it may 
spread more or less canvas, be manned by 
few or many sailors, be navigated with 
more or less skill, be fast or slow, be driven 
by w^ind or steam, — these are secondary 
matters ; the ship itself, staunch enough 
to resist the waves, is the primary condi- 
tion of the voyage. So in this enterprise 
and voyage of life, a body sound enough 
to hold together till the port of three- 
score and ten is gained comes first, in 
all wise and logical consideration. Tal- 
ents, learning, aptitude, good chances, 
energy, — these, according to the degree, 
affect the voj^age, and make it smooth or 
rough, quick or slow, but they do not de- 
termine whether or not there shall be a 
voyage. I do not say that these are to be 
regarded lightly, or other than as great 
helps, but I affirm that without bodily 
health they are in vain so far as achieve- 
ment is concerned. Energy, purpose, cult- 
ure, enthusiasm, thrift, — these are the 
engine that propel the man ; but an engine 
requires first of all proper bearings, a 
frame stout enough to endure the strain of 
its vibrations, and to convert its energy into 



130 HEALTH. 

steady motion. Professor Huxley goes too 
far, however, as he is very prone to do, 
when he says, " Give a man a good deep 
chest and a stomach of which lie never 
knew the existence, and a boy must succeed 
in any practical career." For it is a fact 
that a vast number of very worthless beings 
fullill these conditions ; ** animated patent 
digesters," Carlyle calls them, whose only 
achievements are the consumption of food 
and oxygen. Brain and race and training 
have something to do with success in prac- 
tical careers. The captain on the bridge, 
the pilot at the wheel, and the engineer at 
the lever are conditions of the successful 
vovage, though the staunchness of the ship 
may be tlie primary condition. 

It needs but a glance, however, at the 
men who have succeeded in any depart- 
ment to perceive that, as a rule, they 
have good bodies. I do not say that all 
men who have achieved success have lived 
Ion"", or been free from disease, but I assert 
that it is impossible to name a man great 
in any department of life who did not pos- 
sess what a physician would call a strong 
vitality. Many great men have died early 
and endured life-long disease, but a close 



HEALTH. 131 

physiological examination would show that 
they were largely endowed with nervous 
energy and usually with a good muscular 
system. I grant the rare exception, as a 
skiff may by good luck cross the Atlantic. 
Nature is not blind. She does not put 
great engines into weak ships. There is 
a fallacy in the common remark that the 
mind is too great for the body. A great 
mind may overwork and tear in pieces even 
a good body, but, for the most part, any 
body properly used and superintended is 
strong enough to uphold and do the work 
of the mind lodged in it. Man is one ; no 
line can be drawn between the working 
functions of body and mind. A part of all 
mental action is also ph}^ical action. Will 
is also a matter of nerves, energy is gradu- 
ated by the blood, and the finest thought 
stands with one foot upon tissue of brain. 
By its very definition high thought and 
large achievement imply a strong physical 
basis. Burns died at thirty-seven, and 
Byron at thirty-six, both of dissipation, 
but they had superb bodies, and, at first, 
exuberant health. Raphael and Robertson 
died at the same age with Burns, — one of 
malarial fever, and the other from over- 



132 n HALT 11. 

work and worry, — neither from pbysical 
necessity. Dr. Busbnell early induced con- 
sumption by excessive toil, but lived toiling 
on to seventy. When great men die early 
it is nearly always due either to abuse, or 
to something like an accident, for some 
disejises bear no relation to physical con- 
stitution. Hut great men do not die early. 
Dr. Dunglison says that the average lon- 
gevity of the most eminent philosophers, 
naturalists, artists, jurists, physicians, mu- 
sical composers, scholars, and authors, in- 
cluding poets who are not thought to be 
long-lived, is sixty -six years, — more than 
double the average length of human life. 
Such facts are usually regarded as showing 
that intellectual pursuits are favorable to 
longevity, but they rather show that great 
men have good bodies. A fine engine is 
favorable to the speed and safety of the 
voyage, but quite as much depends upon 
the build of the vessel, and even more upon 
how both are handled. 

If now we look over the men who are 
considered successful in their departments, 
— professional, manufacturing, commercial, 
financial, — we shall find, with rarest excep- 
tion, that they have certain physical char- 



HEALTH. 133 

acteristics which are the primary conditions 
of a strong body and sound health. They 
measure large around the chest ; they have 
depth of lung and good stomachs ; their 
muscular system is large and strong, or, if 
small, it is fine in fibre and well knit to- 
gether ; they have a larger brain than the 
average, and are without hereditary disease 
that early impairs the chief functions. I do 
not say that every man who has these char- 
acteristics achieves distinction, but that no 
man achieves any considerable success who 
is without them. There will always be 
found a certain proportion of Carljde's "an- 
imated patent digesters " with a perfect 
physical make-up, but lacking in ways that 
do not concern us here. Mr. Webster re- 
quired to have his hats made for him on 
account of the size of his head. The hatters 
will tell you of many cases in which there 
is no other likeness to the great senator. 

You will also find that the measure of 
success usually is determined by the manner 
in which the owner of this well-endowed 
body treats it. If the functional power of 
lungs, or stomach, or nerves, is broken down 
— often one and the same process — he 
ceases in exact ratio to be an achiever. His 



134 nEALTH. 

plans may go on themselves, but the fresh 
creative energy is graduated by his bodily 
condition. Force no longer goes into his 
schemes if it has passed out of his body. 

Your physically weak man may get 
through life decently and honorably, li3ut he 
never gets to be the head of anything, fore- 
man, or superintendent, or agent, or presi- 
dent ; he never climbs, he never gets out of 
the crowd. 

I do not expect any denial or doubt on 
these |X)ints, and have set them down only 
to get you to thinking on the subject. I 
fear, however, lest a nearly universal illusion 
may break its force. The first boast of 
childhood reaches a long way into manhood. 
However thin of limb and narrow of chest, 
the young man is always strong. The glory 
that men have ever put upon physical 
strength, and our instinctive sense of its 
excellence, so press upon us that we hate to 
confess our lack of it. Ilenee my readers 
may be saying, " This is not for me, but for 
the weakly ones," who are not anywhere 
to be found. Disenchantment is painful, 
but, in truth, every one is not a Hercules. 
The practical harm of this illusion is that 
we presume upon it, and infer that we can 



HEALTH. 135 

endure any strain we may lay upon our- 
selves. 

But what of atlileticism ? Mr. Hughes, 
its apostle, tells us in his last book that it 
has come to be overpraised and overvalued. 
It is undoubtedly a fine thing, but it has led 
to an oversight of the wiser side of the mat- 
ter, namely, the preservation and care of 
the health, which is not entirely the same 
thing as physical strength. It has also 
reached a phase where the element of sport 
and natural exhilaration is taken out of it. 
They tell us that our national vice is excess, 
— that we lack the sense of proportion. 
Base-ball is no longer a minister of health 
when a reporter sits by, and the cheers or 
jeers of stake-holders follow the player 
around the course. It is unfortunate that 
this game, which Robert Collier calls " the 
healthiest and handsomest ever played," has 
been pushed to such a feverish and wild 
excess by stunning competition and accesso- 
ries of gambling. A game loses its value to 
health when its excitement is drawn from 
any other source than from the game itself. 
Stakes mean something more than healthful 
exhilaration. Competitive walking and row- 
ing are even more objectionable. They not 



136 nEALTn. 

only engender positive disease, but the whole 
atmos})liere, moral and social, is adverse 
to health. Hygeia does not welcome to her 
shrine the heroes of the bat and oar and 
ring. These sports may be used health- 
wise, but as soon as they involve the exer- 
tion called out by great public competition 
and the excitement of wager, they no longer 
minister to health. Unfortunately the tem- 
per of the age does not favor moderation. 
The eh^nent of play seems lost, and a hard 
vulgar pride of suiH^riority to have taken its 
place. The self-sparkling water of natural 
play is not enough, but needs some devil's- 
powder of wager and newspaper report. 

I think the votaries of athleticism run 
into another mistake by giving their interest 
to one thing; they can strike so heavy a 
blow, lift such a weight, walk so far ; they 
are strong«?st in wrist, or leg, or loins. 
Those have been heard of whose superiority 
consists in the amount of liquor they can 
stand, under some delusion that it reflects 
credit on their brains, — plainly the idiotic 
side of the subject. 

But special superiority does not consti- 
tute health. Nothing seems finer physically 
than the trained pugilist, but it is well 



HEALTH. 137 

understood that he dies early and commonly 
of consumption. Health is something dif- 
ferent from strength ; it is universal good 
condition ; it is general vigor ; it is that 
state of body in which every function works 
well. 

Going a little farther in the way of crit- 
icism, too much value is attached to mus- 
cular strength, and too little to nervous 
energy. In some respects identical, they 
still represent distinct bodily forces. One 
is the power that does., the other endures ; 
one strikes a single titanic blow, the other 
never tires ; one wins a wager, the other wins 
a fortune and a name. Physical strength, 
does not imply nervous energy, and though 
nervous energy implies a good body, it does 
not require great physical strength. Secre- 
tary Evarts is slender to frailness, but he 
has a nervous system that enables him to 
endure a harder and longer mental strain 
than any other lawyer at the bar of New 
York. 

The gymnasiums at Yale and Amherst 
and Williams are quite necessary, and are 
justified by their results, but West Kock and 
Holyoke and Grejdock are better. Climb- 
ing a ladder develops physical strength, 



138 TIE ALT 11. 

climbing a niountiiin foods nervous energy. 
Take two students: one can out-jump, out- 
climb, out-lift his class; the othor, having 
slight ambitions of tliis sort, gets upon the 
liills at every chance, *' cutting " a recita- 
tion now and then in the ardor of bis long 
rambles ; at the end of twenty years it will 
bo found that the latter is the healthier 
man. 

In looking at men of marked attainment, 
we find almost invariably certain physical 
ti*nits, but a closer look reveals this subtler 
quality of nerve force or vitality. It is this 
that makes the man what he is as a work- 
ing power. Vitality is the measure of suc- 
cess. What vitality is we do not know. 
We only know that its medium is the nerv- 
ous system, and that it is fed and measured 
by the assimilation of food and air. It has 
a mysterious side, turned away from all 
possibiHty of analysis, like the other side of 
the moon. We only know that while it is 
not nerve, nor oxygen, nor food, it is a force 
that works through them. It may be a 
spiritual thing, yet something that is grad- 
uated by its material relations. But, what- 
ever it is, its degree or amount is determined 
by the physical and nervous condition, as the 



HEALTH. 139 

power of a telescope is determined by the 
size of its aperture. Nourish and strengthen 
your muscles and nerves and you increase 
your vitality, but it is the vitality that does 
the work, not the muscles or nerves. TJie 
greatest amount of vitality^ — this is your 
requirement, young men ! It is a trifling 
matter whether or not you can row, or bat, 
or walk to the admiration of a crowd and 
of yourself ; but it is a matter of the great- 
est moment that you so use your body 
and regulate your life that you shall have 
your largest possible allowance of this mys- 
terious thing called nerve-force, or vitality. 
I am eager, however, to get the subject 
into a finer region of appeal. The posses- 
sion of health should be a matter of straight, 
hearty, honest przcZe. I would have one hold 
himself ashamed who has not a man's share 
of manly vitality. If Providence denies it, 
it must be patiently endured. If one has 
inherited feebleness, let him blush for his 
ancestors. If one lacks it through personal 
fault, he must not only confess himself a 
guilty sinner, but guilty of a shameful sin. 
Bodily weakness minimizes a man ; it is a 
subtraction, a derogation, a maiming in every 
part. It puts one below the average, makes 



140 IIEALTn. 

one fractional, not a full counter in the 
game of life, small change to be disregarded 
in social estimates. 

Despite the revival of athleticism and the 
spread of hygienic knowledge, the feeble 
young man is still to be seen, — not rarely ; 
languid, listless, hesitating, forceless, thin- 
limbed, narrow-chested, uncertain, tremu- 
lous, the very thought of his conducting 
a business is a jest, though often he can 
drink, and smoke, and sit up of nights most 
admirably. I would like to reproduce on 
these pages Lockhart's picture of Wilson, — 
Christopher North, — simply to show what 
a superb thing a full vitality is : the grand- 
est physique of any man of his century, ro- 
bust, athletic, broad across the back, firm 
set upon his limbs ; in complexion a genu- 
ine Goth, with hair of true Sicambrian yel- 
low falling about his shoulders in waving 
locks, his eyes of the lightest yet clearest 
blue, and blood flowing in his cheek with as 
firm a fervor as it ditl in his ancestral Teu- 
tons, who rushed to battle with laughter. 
De Quincey says that when Wilson was 
spending a vacation in the Highlands he 
would often run for hours over the hills, 
bare-headed, his long yellow hair streaming 



HEALTH. 141 

behind him, stretching out his hands and 
shouting aloud in simple exultation of life. 
There is a man for you — healthy, strong, 
vital ! 

To possess health in this fashion, to stand 
under the orderly heavens and amidst 
the harmonies of nature, light, air, earth, 
water, and growing things, all working in 
perfect unison, and feel that the harmonj^ 
reaches to you ; to feel that nature's laws 
are fulfilled in you as well as in tree, and 
planet, and ocean, — this is to share in the 
joy that underlies nature and is heard in 
her unvoiced hymn. Nor is it a smaller 
joy to stand before life with a consciousness 
of strength equal to its emergencies. The 
most exquisite feeling possible to man is 
the sense of ability to overcome obstacles ; 
to face a wall and know that you can beat 
your way through it ; to undertake an en- 
terprise " of pith and moment " and know 
that you can carry it through to success ; 
to come under an inevitable burden and 
know that you can stand erect. Facing life 
in this way is often regarded as a matter of 
mere spirit ; but woe be to the man of spirit 
who undertakes great things without a well- 
dowered body; a dash, a flutter of un- 



142 HE.iZTII. 

strung nerves, ending in collapse, is nil tliere 
is to relate. 

Carlyle, in that wondrous wise talk of 
his to the students at Ediidjurgli, said : 
" Finally, I hnve one advice to give you, 
which is practically of very great impor- 
tance. You are to consider throughout, 
much more than is done at present, and 
what would have been a very great thing 
for me if I had been able to consider, that 
health is a thing to be attended to contin- 
ually ; that you are to regard that as ,the 
very highest of all temporal things for you. 
There is no kind of achievement you could 
make in the world that is equal to perfect 
health. What to it are nuggets or mill- 
ions?** Carlyle here voices the comnnjn 
feeling of overwhelming, irreparable mis- 
take that vast numbers are called to un- 
dergo. Other mistakes may be overcome. 
Mind and moral nature are subject to the 
will, but a weakened body, who can cor- 
rect that ? There are for it no repentances 
and forgivings, but only the stern order of 
the material world, reaping after the sow- 
ing. No pangs of physical suffering would 
have wrung such words from Carlyle, but 
the fact that he had been crippled iii his 



HEALTH. 143 

work, that the clearness of his vision had 
been dimmed, and that a hue not natural 
to himself — a hue partial, distempered, mo- 
rose — was spread over all that he had done. 
It is late before we learn that the whole 
of man goes into his work. Poet, or ora- 
tor, or philosopher, or man of business, his 
body follows him, and holds the pen, and 
shapes the thought, and imparts its quality 
to all that he does or says. An impaired 
vitality of body implies an element of weak- 
ness in the undertaking to the end, and no 
heroism of spirit, or strength of will, or in- 
dustry can eliminate it. 

If this discussion has had sufficient force 
to excite an interest, it may lead to the 
definite question. How shall we nourish 
this vitality and health that Carlyle calls 
" the highest of all temporal things " ? I 
hesitate to enter this field, since no writer 
or speaker likes to antagonize his audience. 
Besides, the way is somewhat worn, and you 
have been driven or dragged over it so often, 
and often in so repulsive ways, that I hesi- 
tate to class myself with your Mentors on 
this subject. Still, trusting to a good under- 
standing hitherto, I push on. 

I think the best observers agree that 



144 HEALTH. 

bodil}" vigor is a matter of preservation and 
steady care, rather than of special training. 
That is, God has given most of us health ; 
the main thing is not to waste it. It is not 
something to be achieved, but something to 
be retained. If tlie practiced wisdom of tlie 
matter were put into one phrase, I think it 
would be sometliing likti tliis : Avoid what- 
ever tends to leasen vitalitf/. 

What are the things that do this ? 

(1.) It would be an unscientific treat- 
ment of the subject, if I did not lay heavy 
emphiusis upon tobacco, as commonly used. 

As in the chapter on Thrift, so here I 
speak of the u.se of tobacco in the single 
light of the subject in hand. There seem 
to me but three main objections to its use. 
It is an unthrifty habit; it is tyrannicid, 
and so spreads out into the field of morals, 
where we will not follow it ; and it is inju- 
rious to health. If these three points seem 
to you to cover nearly the whole sphere, I 
shall not deny it. Thrift, morals, healtli, — 
they are indeed somewhat broad ! 

Persons of certain temperament, and of 
rough out-of-door employment, may be ex- 
ceptions to the extent that the injury is not 
perceptible. But taking life as we have it, 



HEALTH. 146 

— with less and less of the phlegmatic tem- 
perament, and more and more of cit}^ life 
and indoor occupation, — the tobacco habit 
must be set down as injurious. It might not 
be so to any great degree if its use did not 
call into play that subtle law of increase 
that renders moderation a difficult thing to 
secure. Logically, there can hardly be any 
moderation in a habit so related to the will, 
for the habit itself is one of indulgence, 
a field from which the will is shut out ; 
hence the only limit, ordinarily, is that im- 
posed by satiety; the smoker stops when 
he does not care to smoke longer. 

But there are physiological reasons why 
tobacco and alcohol create an increasing ap- 
petite. They are nerve-stimulants ; stimu- 
lated neryes mean at last irritated nerves, 
and irritated nerves clamor forever. And 
being unnaturally irritated and stung into 
undue action they lose their force, which is 
a loss of vitality. This is what any physi- 
cian will tell you, namely, that tobacco is a 
debilitant ; that it weakens the nerve cen- 
tres ; that it lessens vitality ; that it sub- 
tracts from energy ; that, being weakened, 
it renders one more liable to disease ; that 
it engenders certain ailments, and tends to 



146 nEALTn. 

induce a rertnin coiulltion tlie most remote 
from tliat any man could wish. 

(2.) The drinking habit is to be set down 
as a great waster of vitality. Tlie moderate 
use of alcohol is a cheat. It is opposed 
in its very nature to moderation. Mor- 
ally and physiologically it is keyed to the 
opposite of moderation. The exceptions are 
the decoys without which the evil would 
bag no game. 

Ihit the physiologists are practically 
agreed that even a moderate use of alcohol 
is injurious to vitality. Dr. Richardson, of 
London, says, " It is the duty of my profes- 
sion to show, as it can show to the most per- 
fect demonstration, that alcohol is no neces- 
sity of man ; that it is out of place -when 
used for any other than a medical, chemical, 
or artistic purpose ; that it is no food ; that 
it is the most insidious destroyer of health, 
hapjiiness, and life." He says again : 
"Among the chief sources of the reduction 
of vitality to the low figure at which it 
stands, alcohol stands first ; it kills in the 
present, it impairs the vital powers in the 
succeeding generations." " If England were 
redeemed from its use," he says, " the vital- 
ity of the nation would rise one third in its 



HEALTH. 147 

value." But the drinking habit in this dry, 
nerve-exciting climate of ours is far more 
injurious than it is in England. If it there 
reduces vitality a third in value, what must 
it do here ? The simple fact for a rational 
being to consider and govern himself by is 
that every time he drinks a glass of liquor, 
whatever its per cent, of alcohol, lie les- 
sens his vitality ; he has just so much less 
power to work with, less ability to endure, 
less nervous force for fine efforts, less tough- 
ness to put against difficulties, less time to 
live. What ! if it be only beer ? Yes ! the 
verdict of science is absolute and final. 

Does any one sing the praises of wine ? 
Every generous heart has a chord that vi- 
brates to that note ; but, after all, the wine 
of life is better and more musical. Does 
any one speak of usage ? I protest by all 
the glories of humanity against a fashion 
that overrides the welfare of humanit}^ 

(3.) I come to points less emphatic, less 
familiar, also, as yet, but soon to engage 
practical attention. It is not a hundred 
years since Priestley discovered ox3^gen, and 
so run upon the fact that air robbed of it 
by breathing contains dangerous properties, 
a truth that has not yet reached general 



148 HEALTH. 

recognition. Sextons ami niill-buiUlers, and 
the entire in-door -world, practii-ally hold 
that one can live equally uell anywhere 
outside of a vacuum. Oxygen is life, the 
gas it liberates is death. When you breathe 
air deficient in one and over-laden with the 
other you reduce vitality, and pave the way 
for disease. The niolanc-huly feature of mill 
life — now coming almost into supremacy 
in numbers — is not low wages, but scant 
oxygen. An English physician says that 
" health is ii thing absolutely unknown 
amongst English factory operatives." 

In this respect many of you are shut out 
of any choice. I can only say, vahu^ every 
breath of pure air you can get, work in it 
if possible, sleep in it without fail, hesitate 
to stay where it is not, and, whenever it is 
l)ossible, drink it in as it blows over sum- 
mits of hills, and through moist woods. 

(4.) Lack of sleep is a great waster of 
vitality. 

Carlyle quotes the French financier with 
a sigh : " Why is there no sleep to be sold ? 
Sleep was not in the market at any price/ 
Its lack is the tragical feature of broken 
health. ** Chief nourisher in life's feast," 
the omniscient poet calls it. Never, except 



HEALTH. 149 

for the most imperative reason, should one 
break in upon that sacred process for which 
the sun withdraws itself and silence broods 
over the hemisphere. Its hours cannot be 
safely changed. Two young men, equally 
strong, work side by side ; one sleeps early, 
and long, the other retires late and irregu- 
larly. Apparently they get on equally well, 
but the physician will tell you that one is 
drawing on his stock of vitality, while the 
other keeps it full ; in time one is bankrupt 
in health, the other rich. 

Sleep is to be regarded as a divine thing ; 
it is akin to creation. One should never 
pass into it without adoration ; it is a return 
into the hands of God to be new-made, the 
tire and age of the day to be taken out, and 
freshness and youth wrought in. 

'* Come, blessed barrier between day and day; 
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health ! " 

Or, more tenderly, with Allingham : — 

" Sleep is like death, and after sleep 

The world seems new begun ; 
While thoughts stand luminous and firm, 

Like statues in the sun ; 
Refreshed from supersensaous founts, 
The soul to clearer vision mounts." 

The physiologist cannot explain it ; all he 
knows is that, in some way, it renews vital- 



150 nEALTn. 

ity. To tamper -with it, to defraud it, to 
take it fitfully, is to throw away life itself. 
It is a mistake to devote the hours up to 
midnight to work, or pleasure, or books. It 
may be a very innocent thing to dance at 
the right time and place, and in the right 
wav and company, but to dance all night is 
to defraud life itself. C()mi)are, in any mat- 
ter requiring nerve and head, one who has 
slept all night with one who has spent a 
sleepless night and you will get an ilhnn- 
inating verdict on the value of sleep. 

Business men who have borne the heavy 
cares of the last twelve years will assent 
when I say that the whole life, hygienically, 
should be ordered with regard to sleep. If 
cue can sleep he can endure anything, he is 
every day a new man. Food, exercise, 
pleasures, hours, everything should be sub- 
ordinated to securing sleep. No revival of 
troubles, no vexing questions should pre- 
cede it. It should be as regular as the stars, 
and like the night itself in its solemn peace- 
fulness. 

(5.) I will only name sound digestion as 
fundamental to vitality, it being so well un- 
derstood. The deadly effects of frying-pan 
and pie are no longer secrets. The hygienists 



HEALTH. 151 

are steadily telling us in tlie newspapers 
that we eat too niucli and too fast, tliat the 
national cooking is bad, that narcotics and 
stimulants and bad air and indolence and 
hurry and anxiety are foes of digestion. 
Professor Huxley encounters no denial when 
he makes a good stomach a condition of suc- 
cess in any practical career. 

(6.) Nor will you expect me to do more 
than name those requirements of self-respect, 
as well as of health, the frequent bath, and 
that scrupulous care of the body that reaches 
up to religion. 

As a piece of sanitary statistics, bearing 
on this and kindred points, I think the civ- 
ilized world can offer nothing so remarkable 
as the following. I insert it for its suggest- 
iveness, and also because it has not before 
been published. Seventy-five Chinamen in 
the employ of C. T. Sampson & Co., of 
North Adams, lost in four months but eight 
days, and no one man lost a whole day, 
showing an entire exemption from severe 
sickness ; more than seventy-eight hundred 
consecutive working days and not an entire 
day lost by an individual. When taken in 
connection with the fact that these men 
daily took a sponge-bath, drank no alcohol, 



152 UEALTn. 

slept early and long, and ate good food, the 
figures turn into arguments and appeals. 

(7.) There are hindrances to a strong 
vitality that are inseparahUi from life as it 
comeB to most of us. Our working classes 
labor harder and longer than any other in 
the world, our business men have longer 
hours, our professional men give themselves 
less rest. There is a danger from over-work 
not to be forgotten ; it is already being fi«lt 
in a rapid increase of nervous diseases witli 
their irresistible tendency to the use of nar- 
cotics and stimulants, and a ready suscepti- 
biUty to malarial influences. Our climate 
does not admit of so hard labor as that of 
England, but the English operative works 
but five and a half days to our six, and the 
professional and business man begins late 
and stops early, making a sort of Sabbath 
of his evening. 

(8.) Nothing more surely cuts away and 
undermines the vital forces than worry and 
anxiet}', however caused. Happily, trouble 
is not native nor lasting in youth — touch- 
ing it but lightly : — 

** As night to him that sitting on a hill 
Sees the niidHummer, midnight, Norway sun 
Set into sunrise." 



HEALTH. 153 

But as we descend from these glorious 
heights we encounter the inevitable cares 
and anxieties that are involved in the in- 
creased relations of life. It is a large part 
of what Sir Thomas Browne calls " the 
militia of life " to see to it that these cares 
do not break up the order either of soul 
or body. The practical lesson here is both 
religious and prudential. It says, live care- 
fully, avoid needless entanglements, don't 
compromise yourself, keep a good conscience, 
have nothing in your life that requires con- 
cealment. Burdens and cares a man must 
have, but a true and simple habit of life, 
held to loftily and devoutly, will keep them 
from harming body or soul. 

(9.) My last suggestion will, perhaps, 
have more novelty than any other before 
named. The passions of anger, hatred, 
grief, and fear are usually considered as be- 
longing to morals, but Dr. Richardson puts 
them amongst the influences most destruc- 
tive of vitality. " The strongest," he says, 
" cannot afford to indulge in them." Shake- 
speare, whom nothing escapes, speaks of 
envy as " lean-faced." 

" Heat not a furnace for your foes so hot 
That it do singe yourself." 



154 HEALTn. 

When these great passions burn, the oil 
of life is rapidly spent. Hence, divine wis- 
dom forbids hatred and anger, and divine 
love heals our griefs and fears, as liurlful 
alike to body and soul. 

I cannot better end these suggestions 
than by quoting some words of Bacon, 
whose wisdom seems to comprehend every 
subject lie touches. As if speaking to 
young men, he says, *' It is a safer conclu- 
sion to say, * This agreeth not well with 
me, therefore I will not continue it,' than 
this : * I find no offense (or hurt) of this, 
therefore I may use it;* that is, don't wait 
till you are hurt by a habit before giving it 
up, but find out its ordinary tendency, and 
act accordin<'lv." 



VII. 
READING. 



"Bring wilh thee the books." — St. Paul. 

"'rhe»e young obscure years ought to be increasingly 
employed in gaining a knowledge of things worth knowing ; 
especially of heroic human souls worth knowing." — Cak- 
LYLE. 

" 'T would be endless to tell you the things that he knew, 
All separate facts, undtniably true, 
Hut with him or lath other they'd nothing to do; 
No pnwer of t(.ui!>iiiing, arranging, discerning, 
Digested the- ini^-^ i-. ' -..:,d into learning." 

A Fable for Critics. 

"No man can rtu.i »u;i ],r>nn that which he cannot karn 
to read with pleasure." — Fuksidknt I'outek. 



VII. 

EEADING. 

The universal distribution of books has 
given rise to a new and distinct ambition 
that may be described as a desire for intel- 
lectuality. To be intellectual, or to be re- 
garded as such, is certainly among the am- 
bitions of modern society. The logic of it 
is plain : men do not like to be out of rela- 
tions to great facts. The prominent figure, 
the strong party, the new discovery, fixes 
their attention and enlists their sympathies. 
Napoleon, simply by his outstanding great- 
ness as a phenomenon, commands a hom- 
age from which our judgment dissents. The 
dignity and sense of reality that Milton 
throws about Satan has secured for him 
what may even be called respect. 

Books are the great fact of modern civili- 
zation, its finest expression and summation. 
If we were to send to the next planetary 
neighbor our most representative thing I 



158 READING. 

think it avouIcI be a book — Sliakespeare, or 
the New Encyclopajdia. But books stand 
for intellect; their source, tlicir method, 
their reception is in the intellect. Thus, 
the whole atmosphere about them being 
intellectual they have come to stand for 
tlie thing itself, and to imply its possession 
on the part of all concerned with them. It 
seeras an incongruity when an ignorant per- 
son sells us a book. No one can afford to 
ignore this great latter-day fact. You will 
need to drop somewhat bdow the average 
of our American culture before you will 
find one who does not claim something of 
the spirit that surrounds books; very ill- 
founded, it may be, but very devoutly en- 
tertained. There is almost no conception 
of intellectuality apart from them ; to know 
them is to be intellectual. 

There may be some crudeness and misap- 
prehension in this, but, on the whole, it is 
praiseworthy. It marks the full transition 
from animal to man. It points the way to 
better things, for when the masses actu- 
ally think, all else of which the moralist 
dreams and the saint prays, will follow. 
Thought is the crucible in which all things 
are resolved and separated to their true is 
sues. 



READING. 159 

What shall I read ? Such is the ques- 
tion everywhere put hy this new ambition. 
The question does not seem to me a difficult 
one, like that of amusements, but, on the 
contrary, too easy to admit of much discus- 
sion. It is like standing in an orchard 
laden with fruit ; it is not a matter of 
choice, but of falling-to, and taking the 
best. The ^YO^m-eaten, the wind-blasted, 
the rotten, will of course be passed by. 

I am not sure that any rule is of very 
great use except one, and that shall be 
negative : namely, read no books but the 
best. But this negative rule covers a vast 
field. The bad or indifferent books are 
more than the good; and reading, of course, 
bears the same proportion. A book once 
represented the inspiration and thought of 
its author ; to-day it represents a price 
paid. The change and perversion is im- 
mense. The standard and spirit of litera- 
ture are not drawn from genius and intelli- 
gence, but from the tastes and conceptions 
of the masses, — an inversion that demands 
unending protest. When the author abdi- 
cates in favor of the reader there is an 
end of literature. Even in children's books 
there is no need of descent. A child re- 



IGO RKADIXG. 

quires only plain ness, never a dropping 
down. The great masterpieces in this lit- 
erature — " Robinson Crusoe," Hans An- 
dersen's Stories and those of our own 
Andersen, Mr. Scudder, — ''Paul and Vir- 
ginia," " Picciola,"— ''Arabian Nights" 
— appeal equally to young and old ; one 
never suspects in them that the author has 
left his highest plane. To make this dis- 
tinction between the legitimate and tla* 
false is difficult until one's taste and judg- 
ment are established. But there are cer- 
tain rult's that come nigh to the matter. 

(1.) Resolutely avoid the immoral litera- 
ture that flood the news-stalls. One who 
reads in this direction reads himself into 
moral chaos and darkness ; it is an un- 
knowing, uneducating process. There is 
something peculiarly destructive in that 
knowledge of evil which comes through a 
book or picture. The direct sight and sound 
of it do not 80 wound and blast as does that 
apprehension of it gained by reading. It 
thus seems to get into the mind ; it en- 
trenches itself in the imagination, where it 
stays and multiplies itself, breeding through 
the fancy, turning these noblest faculties 
into ministers of perdition. 



161 



' Where such fairies once have danced 
No grass will ever grow." 



(2.) There is a class of periodicals, 
weekly and monthly, of a higher grade, 
prhited in heavy type and with coarse, 
startling illustrations, and filled with stories. 
It is hard to determine whether the paper, 
the type, the illustrations, or the matter, is 
the shabbiest ; all wear the broadest badge 
of vulgarity. Not the worst feature is 
their cheapness. They are not often im- 
moral, but they lack absolutely and utterly 
every positive element of true literature. 
Their effect might be described as mental 
obliteration. For reading may be an un- 
educating process, and lead to a reversal 
of this intellectuality of which we spoke. 
When the mind is steadily addressed in a 
low and untrue way, when it is constantly 
excited b}^ false emotions and set to acting 
in unreasonable ways, it loses its power to 
guide and serve ; flahhy^ perhaps, is the best 
word to describe it. 

I say, not only do not read this rubbish, 
but read nothing in preference. The mind 
will be stronger if left to itself and the 
unlettered literature of sky, and field, and 
forest, or even street, where, at least, you 
11 



162 READING. 

-will see true men and Avomen, and real 
transactions. Ratlier tlian spend your Sun- 
days with these sheets, go into the hills, 
and hear what the wnnds and hlr.ls liiivo to 
Bay. 

(3.) There is a class of books known as 
the novels of the day; novels of adventure, 
of society, and of high-wrou<;ht passion. 
As a rule they are to be avoided on the 
same ground that you decline to buy a fair- 
looking garment when you have reason to 
believe that its wool is shoddy and its silk 
is cotton. It is true that a great novel may 
contain exciting adventure; in itself there 
is no harm in thrilling events, for all fact 
runs off into surprise. A great novel may 
depict society, and it is always animated by 
a great passion, but it will be true in each 
of these respects. Such books are rare ; 
you may count their authoi-s on your two 
bands. Nothing can make a book worth 
reading in which the delineation of motives 
and conduct is false to reality and nature. 
If the adventure is excessive, if the delinea- 
tion of society consists of human frailty and 
sin set in any other light than of condemna- 
tion, if that is set forth as common wdiich is 
exceptional, if the sentiment is morbid, if 



READING. 163 

the frailties of genius are made to override 
the homely, every-day virtues, if exceptions 
are made in favor of immorality, if the 
whims of the author are set down as laws 
of conduct, — let all such books go unread. 
Among many good reasons, the main one is 
that these characteristics have a common 
root of untruth, while the first and absolute 
requisite of a book is that it shall be true. 
Nothing but truth can feed the mind — as 
nothing else can please it, if it is a healthy 
mind. It is truth that makes the essential 
greatness of a book, — holding the mirror 
up to nature, getting the reality of things 
before the reader. Great masses, of books, 
nearly all the novels of the day, yield be- 
fore this fundamental criticism. They have 
one or both of two characteristics ; the plot 
turns upon a restlessness under, or viola- 
tion of, marriage, or the tone is pessimistic, 
namely, holding evil to be the law of society. 
Occasionally a sweet, healthy novel slips 
from the press, like one of Mrs. Stowe's, or 
Mrs. Craik's, or MacDonald's, or Mrs. Whit- 
ney's, — but the great mass are such as I 
have described. These books do not hold 
the mirror up to nature, or to society, or to 
the real currents of human thought ; they 



164 READING. 

mirror tlie distorted notions of very con- 
ceited persons of very shabby principles, 
who find it easier to write down tlieir own 
vaporings than to study nature aud so- 
ciety. 

It is not pk'asant to know that a vast 
number of persons read little else but such 
books as these. The frequent domestic trag- 
edy, tl»e discontent, the sentiuientality, and 
general hystericalness of thou<,dit and man- 
ners, are largely due to this overwrought and 
shallow literature. It not only weakens the 
fibre of the mind, but it induces a low stand- 
ard of taste in everything e]«<» — amuse- 
ments, religion, society. 

But, you ask, how shall we know the 
good books from the bad ? Just as you dis- 
tinguish bi-tween persons, by reputation and 
acquaintance. You are cautious in regard 
to your company ; you make no acquaint- 
ance except on the strength of a proper in- 
troduction or general reputation. Use the 
same rule with books. There is no neces- 
sity of reading the last new novel. If you 
have any secret vanity in literary things, to 
which I do not object', let me say (in a 
whisper) that the proper thing is not to 
read the last new book ; if you are tempted 



READING. 165 

to do so avoid mention of it, unless you 
would be thought a parvenu in these high 
realms. If your friend who " reads all the 
new books " is patronizingly surprised that 
you have not seen Zola, or Ouida's last, in- 
quire how long since he has read " Henry 
Esmond," and the blush will be on the 
other cheek. An author very soon gets a 
reputation ; go by it and make no advent- 
ures amongst the unknown. One should 
find his way in the literary world as he 
learns geography, by maps, and not by first- 
hand explorations. Emerson says, Wait a 
year before reading a new book ; and Low- 
ell:— 

"Eeading new books is like eating new bread, 
One can bear it at first, but by gradual steps be 
Is brougbt to death's door of a mental dyspepsy." 

Occasionally an author enters at once into 
an assured and commanding place, as Ebers, 
who a year ago was nearly unknown in fic- 
tion, but is to be read with confidence. 

What of newspapers and magazines ? 
Read the former as a matter of business and 
necessity, and expect no advantage from 
them except as they report to you current 
events. I must know what is going on in 
the world, I buy the newspaper to tell me, 



166 READING. 

and for no other reason. If the keen-eyed 
editor puts a few of the events together, 
and says they point in this or that direction, 
I thank him, but keep a look-out for myself. 
I ask of him chiefly facts, events, the daily 
history of the globe. As a mental disci- 
pline, the reading of newsi)ap('r8 is hurtful. 
What can be worse for the mind than to 
think of forty things in ten minutes ? It 
is commonly understood that the great ed- 
itors pursue a definite course of continuous 
study for the sake of mental integrity, and 
as a defense against the dissipation of their 
daily work. 

Magazines, the monthlies and quarter- 
lies, fall into a different category. They 
often contain solid and thorough pieces of 
thought and information, and are the chan- 
nels of much of the best current literature. 
But beware of the magazine stor}-, except 
it be from a master ; and as for serials — to 
read a good story thus is a self-inflicted cru- 
elty. 

And what of the novel ? Almost the only 
limits left about novel-reading are tliose 
of likes and dislikes, rules and standards 
everywhere else, but none here. Highly 
moral people read very immoral books ; re- 



READING. 167 

fined people read vulgar ones ; fastidious 
people welcome to their minds characters 
whom they would turn out of their parlors. 
Children go to school for study and come 
home to serials, a veritable Penelope's-web 
process. The wliole matter is at very loose 
ends, and needs to be brought under some 
law of reason and consistency. 

As a first step in this direction, read but 
few novels, and with carefulest selection, 
and at decided intervals of time. 

I would have two objects in view, va- 
rying them according to the end, namely, 
amusement, and knowledge of life. 

Every hard worker is entitled to a holi- 
day now and then. Treat yourself to a 
novel as you take a pleasure trip, and, be- 
cause you do it rarely, let it be a good one. 
We have a friend who prays that his life 
may be spared till he has read all of the 
Waverley; for he will not dull his interest 
in one by soon taking up another. Having 
selected your novel with something of the 
care you would choose a wife, give yourself 
\ip to it ; lend to its fancy the wings of your 
own imagination ; revel in it without re- 
straint ; drink its wine ; keep step with its 
passion ; float on its tide, whether it glides 



1G8 READING. 

serenely to happy ends, or sweeps dark and 
tumultuous to tragic destinies. 

Such reading is not only a fine recrea- 
tion, but of highest value, especially to busi- 
ness men. It cultivates what the American 
lacks by nature, and doubly lacks through 
social atmosphere, namely, sentiment; by 
wliich I mean responsiveness to the higher 
and finer truths. 

But the main use of the \\nyv\ is to un- 
fold character and society ; this is its voca- 
tion, — to depict life. It may be historical, 
domestic, social, psychological, political, or 
religious, but its theme is life. Its value 
consists in the fidelity of the picture and 
the literary charm with whicli it is invested. 
When I read a novel of Thackeray my 
knowledge of man is increased. I get 
broader views of humanity. I see what a 
wide, deep, complex thing life is. Hence I 
will read no novels but the best, since they 
alone can show me life as it is ; and above 
all things I must not think of life falsely. 
We might live virtuously while holding 
that the world is flat, but not if we were 
deceived as to the shape and proportions of 
man. Ptolemaic astronomy were better 
than unnatural fiction. 



READING. 169 

If you ask who these best novelists are, 
I will venture to name those who, at least, 
head the column. Pardon the dry list 
Scott, Cooper, Thackeray, Mrs. Stowe, 
Dickens, " George Eliot," Hawthorne, Mac- 
Donald, Miss Bronte, Miss Edgeworth, 
Mrs. Whitney, Jane Austen, Bulwer, Lever, 
J\lrs. Gaskell, Trollope, Charles Kingsley, 
Black, Howells, Blackmore ; of foreign au- 
thors, Victor Hugo, Auerbach, Ruffini, and 
Ebers. 

Surelj^, here are enough for the longest 
life. There is a vast number of good nov- 
els besides these, — correct in presentation, 
sound in sentiment, instructive, entertain- 
ing. I do not say. Don't read them ; but 
consider the matter well. I once asked our 
widest and most thorough reader of Eng- 
lish literature if he had read a certain pop- 
ular novel. He replied, " I only read the 
saints." I wondered why I had read it, 
when I, too, might have read the saints. 

But the novel is the holiday of literature ; 
let us come down to its every-day features. 
Here the first question will be. What shall 
determine my reading ? 

(1.) Wliile you are to read nothing that 
does not interest you, something besides 



170 READING. 

interest must decide what the book shall 
be. If the interest always coincided with 
what is best, it were well indeed ; but 
pleasure rarely coincides wholly with judg- 
ment. Therefore, I say, read what is best 
for you, wluvt will teach you something ; 
read to know, to think ; but you must also 
be interested. It is not necessary to de- 
scend in the character of one's reading to 
find zest ; it may be found by turning 
aside. Descents, everywhere and in all 
things, are to be avoided. You may take no 
interest in Hume's *' History of England ; " 
try Fronde's, or Knight's with its rich illus- 
trations, or Dickens's ** Child's History " — 
a book for all. Anotlier metliod would be to 
read those novels of Scott that touch upon 
the various reigns and the liistorieal jdays 
of Shakespeare, — the best of all Englisli 
histories, truest to tlie time and freest from 
bias. Starting with one of these, or " The 
Abbot," or Kingslej'^'s " Hereward," pass to 
the more accurate, but no truer form in the 
pages of Macaulay and Freeman and Green. 
Ancient history is proverbially dull ; but 
we are now getting it in charming and 
trustworthy form from Ebers. Still, we 
must not forget Plutarch, — "the prattler 



READING. 171 

in history," Emerson calls him, — the seren- 
est and most stable figure in the whole 
world of books. 

So of biograjDhy. The Lives of Dr. Ar- 
nold and Sir Fowell Buxton may be dull 
to you, but Smiles's " Life of Stephenson," 
or Hughes's " Alfred the Great," or Irving's 
" Columbus," cannot fail to stir your inter- 
est. 

Your religious friend puts into your hand 
a volume of sermons, — very good, doubtless, 
but to you " dry as summer dust." Ask 
him for those of Phillips Brooks or Rob- 
ertson, and in time you may come to 
like those of Bushnell and Lyddon, and 
even Mozley. Perhaps you are skeptical, 
and he gives you a volume of Evidences 
— Paley or McCosh ; but it is too exact- 
ing in its thought, and fails to hit your 
mood or temper of mind. Try, instead, 
" Ecce Homo," or Brooks's " Influence of 
Jesus," or the "Life of Robertson," or 
Hughes's "Manliness of Christ," — books 
instinct with fresh and noble feeling. 

Still, an earnest reader must have a 
deeper motive than interest. One must 
not pet one's self in this matter. It is a 
serious part of life's business, and must 



172 READING. 

be conducted upon sound principles and 
with resolute firmness. 

(2.) Read for general culture. As one 
studies grammar for correct speech, or trav- 
els to learn the ways of the world, or min- 
gles in society for polish, so one ought to 
read for a certain dress and decoration of 
the mind. It is not creditable — it is liko 
excessive rusticity in manners and attire — 
to lack a certain knowledge of English liter- 
ature. It is unkind and embarrassing to 
others not to be able to respond, with some 
degree of intelligence, to what they assume 
to be well known by all. I hardly know 
how you manage it wlien the young lady 
fresh from Vassar or Wellesley asks you 
which of Shakespeare's plays you most ad- 
mire. I can assure you that no disquisition 
upon Buffalo Bill will blind her to tlie fact 
that you are unfamiliar w^th Hamlet. To 
this end of simple fitness for society, one 
should read parts, at least, of certain au- 
thors. It will not be amiss to indicate the 
lowest requirements, especially as they are 
available by all: a part of Shakespeare's 
plays, — ''Hamlet," ''Macbeth," "The Tem- 
pest," "The Merchant of Venice," and 
" Julius Ciiesar ; " Milton's shorter poems 



READING. 173 

and the first two books of " Paradise Lost ; " 
*' Pilgrim's Progress ; " Dr. Johnson's " Lives 
of the Poets ; " the poems of Goldsmith ; 
Lamb's essays ; Burns ; WorclsAvorth's bal- 
lads, sonnets, and "Ode on Immortality ;" 
parts of Byron's " Childe Harold ; " a few 
of the shorter poems of Coleridge, Shelley, 
Keats, and Cowper ; four or five of Scott's 
novels ; some of the essays of Macaulay and 
De Quincey ; Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, and 
Ruskin in part ; some history of England, — 
Knight's or Green's; the one or two best 
works of the greater novelists ; some definite 
knowledge of our own authors, — Irving, 
Cooper, Hawthorne, Prescott, Motley, Ban- 
croft, Mrs. Stowe, Emerson in " English 
Traits," and our five great poets. So much 
we need to read before our minds are well 
enough attired for good society ; otherwise 
we must appear in intellectual corduroy and 
cow-skin. 

(3.) Read somewhat in the way of disci- 
pline. This may take you in a direction 
contrary to your tastes. You are doubtless 
fond of tbe novel, but it is not enough to 
say, I will read only such as are good. You 
require another kind of book, — an essay, a 
treatise, a review article, a history or biog- 



174 BEADING. 

rapliy, — something that ma}- not ivin at- 
tention, which, therefore, you must give. 
The chief, if not only vaUie, of mathemat- 
ics as a discipline lies in its cultivation of 
the habit of atteyition ; close consecutive 
thought held to its work by the will. I do 
not see why the same end may not bo 
reached by reading, if it is done in this way 
of attending, — stretching the mind over the 
subject so as wholly to cover and embrace 
it. When one reads out of mere interest, 
and without exercise of the will, the mind 
gets flabby. There can be no strength where 
there is no will. The omnivorous reader is 
often weak and essentially ignorant. There 
is such a thing as being the slave of books ; 
true reading implies mastery. 

(4.) Read variously. I'he secret of true 
living is to have many interests. Think 
with the astronomer and with him whose 
talk is of manures and soils ; with your 
neighbor and with him at the antipodes; witli 
lawyer and doctor and minister ; witli mer- 
chant and manufacturer; with high and low. 
It is a rich and various world we are in ; we 
should touch it at as many points as possi- 
ble. The literature that mirrors it is also 
rich and various ; wdder even than the world, 



READING. 175 

since it contains the past, and also the pos- 
sible. Man is coordinated to this richness 
and variety ; so far as may be, he should draw 
upon the whole of it, for he needs it all to 
fill his own mould. I distrust the man of 
one book, even if it is the best of books, or 
of one class of books. A lawyer may get no 
direct aid from Tennyson in pleading cases, 
but you may more safely trust your case 
with him - — if it be a large one — because 
the fact of reading such an author indicates 
that he covers more space in the world of 
thought. A physician cannot study human 
nature in Shakespeare without getting a 
conception of man helpful in his practice. 
He fails oftenest in an imaginative grasp of 
his business; Shakespeare is the best teacher 
of breadth. All other things being equal, 
trust the lawyer who reads books of imagi- 
nation, the physician who studies books un- 
folding human nature, and the preacher who 
does not confine himself to theology. 

In the recent works of English scholars, 
whether on natural science, medicine, his- 
tory, political economy, biography, or theol- 
ogy, you will observe that without excep- 
tion they are wide readers outside of their 
departments. It not only imparts a charm 



176 READING. 

anJ ricliness to their style, but makes tln-ir 
books more trustworthy, since it sliows that 
they think in various directions, and there- 
fore are better entitled to their opinions. 

There is special need of wide reading at 
present, because of a certain antagonism be- 
tween the great departments of thought. 
Physics and ethics, science and theology, 
stand opposed. But the reader, whose 
business it is to "circumnavigate human 
nature," cannot recognize such antagonism; 
Trojan and Tyrian must be regarded Jilike. 
It is not scholarly to read science, and not 
morals: Tyndall, and not Dr. Hopkins; 
Spencer, and not President Porter ; Dar- 
win, and not Martineau. 

You will find, after a time, that one of 
the chief delights in reading consists in 
substantiating what you find in one depart- 
ment by what you find in another. The 
secret of the charm lies in the fact that one 
is following the hidden threads that bind the 
creation into unity. Material things are 
the shadows of spiritual things ; the law of 
the planet is in the flower and in man. The 
intelligent reader has no keener enjoyment 
than in the surprise felt as he comes on these 
analogies. As an illustration, — in our last 



READING. Ill 

cbapter, the passion of anger was spoken of 
as hostile to phj^sical vitality. We learned 
that these wires that we call nerves are 
never so strong after they have once trem- 
bled with rage, — a fact taught by physiol- 
og3^ But in the Book of morals we are for- 
bidden to hate, and anger is declared to be 
folly. As we come across it in physics, we 
say. How wise ! When we find it in ethics, 
we say, How gracious ! It is a law that 
allies itself throughout each sphere with 
highest good. But what shall we say when 
we place the two revelations side by side, — 
the body uttering its physical law and the 
spirit its moral law in utter accord, — heaven 
and earth agreeing to one issue ! The 
charm of such interwoven truth is the re- 
ward of the wide and impartial reader. 
But if you have a fancy or partiality, you 
may best feed it not by direct, but by gen- 
eral reading, for you will find it running as 
a thread through all literature. 

(5.) Never read below your tastes. If 
a book seems to you in any way poor, 
coarse, low, or untrue, it may be passed by. 
There may be reasons why we should as- 
sociate with low persons ; we may influence 
them, but we cannot alter a book. The 

12 



178 READIXG. 

first quality to be demanded of a book is 
that it shall hQtrue; the secoiul is that it 
shall be noble. If there is laughter in it, 
it must be tlie laughter of the gods. Books 
of humor, especially those of American 
origin, are to be carefully scrutinized, and 
at most but "tasted." Those of Lowell 
and Holmes are almost the only exceptions. 

(6.) Read on a level with your author, 
with no subservience, in a kindly critical 
mood, — the author a person, yourself also 
consciously a pei*son. 

I occasionally turn over the leaves of a 
copy of ** Tucker's Light of Nature,*' — as 
solid and abstruse a book as one often en- 
counters, — that was owned and annotated 
on its broad margins by Leigh Hunt. It 
is admirable to see how the airy poet kept 
abreast of his robust author, challenging 
his thought, denying here and agreeing 
there. I have by me a copy of the ''Life 
and Letters of Henry More " annotated by 
President Stiles; but the old New England 
divine does not seem to have been abashed 
before the great Platonist. Do not sit at 
the feet of your author, but by his side; 
trust him, but watch him. He has his 
limitations and prejudices, and at some point 



READING. 179 

they may be narrower than your own. This 
is eminently necessary in reading such au- 
thors as " George EHot," Emerson, Carlyle, 
and Matthew Arnold. The critical faculty 
is assisted by wide reading. We not only 
use our own judgment, but we learn to pit 
authors against each other : Emerson the 
transcendentalist against "George Eliot" 
the positivist ; the spiritual Pascal against 
the materalistic Spencer. It is not neces- 
sary to agree wholly with any author; 
there is in each a limitation, a weakness, 
which is to be taken for granted. It is 
Shakespeare only who seems never to falter, 
never to go beyond or fall short. 

(7.) Read in the line of your pursuit. 
If you build sewers or bridges, study up the 
Roman aqueducts. If you handle dyes, do 
not be ignorant of the Tyrian purple. The 
obvious effect of reading upon one's pursuit 
is that one can follow it more intelligently, 
but it has a finer value ; when we take our 
labor into literature, it is ennobled. Farm- 
ing has grown steadily in dignity as it has 
been studied and followed in the light of 
books. When we read of our pursuits, we 
think of them more calmty, more profoundly 
and objectively. Our vocation is so near us 



180 READISG. 

that we do not see it, but the book sepa- 
rates us froui it, so that we look on all sides. 
And if b)^ chance it throws about it some 
ray of genius, — puts it into the setting of 
a poem or romance, — we go to its tasks 
with ligliter hearts. 

(8.) I have no need to suggest tliat one 
should read in view of one's deficiencies. 

(9.) Read thoroughly. The triteness of 
the words measures their importance. You 
may glide over the newspaper and rush 
through the novel, but have constantly at 
lian«l something of a substantial character, 
and lit to be classed as literature, — a his- 
tory, a biography, a volume of travels or 
essays or science, that you are reading for 
the definite purpose of transferring its con- 
tents into your minJ, with a view to keep- 
ing them there. 

Webster siiid, " Many other students read 
more than I did, and knew more than I did, 
but so much as I read I made my own." 
Burke read a book as if he were never to 
see it a second time. 

(10.) Read from a centre. I mean, take 
your stand upon an epoch, or character, or 
question, and read out from it. Suppose it 
be Iceland : first know the country by books 



READING. 181 

of travel, then study its history through its 
millenium back to Denmark, then its liter- 
ature as it runs into Scandinavian romance 
and mythology, then trace its explorations 
upon this continent. Suppose it to be Mil- 
ton : hunt him up and down in the encyclo- 
psedias, and wherever else he may be found, 
from Dr. Johnson's Life, a hundred and 
fifty years ago, to Pattison's Life, of yes- 
terday. You thus come into a sort of inti- 
macy with your character that is almost 
personal, and even friendly, if you care so 
to have it. Or suppose it to be a history : 
when you come to such a character as Crom- 
well or Mary Stuart, find out what the va- 
rious authors say, from the Tory Hume to 
the radical Froude and the dissenting Gei- 
kie. One age, one country, one character, 
thoroughly mastered — this is reading. 

If this seems like making a toil of what 
should always be a pleasure, let me say that 
after a time this habit of thoroughness gets 
to be the source of its keenest enjoyment. 
We speak of the pleasures of knowledge, 
but may not have discovered that only exact 
knowledge can yield pleasure. The prin- 
ciple goes very deep. A desultory, c.treless 
reader may draw a certain excitement from 
books, but no peace or satisfaction. 



182 READING. 

(11.) Having made, by cluince, a deca- 
logue of rides, among which I trust there is 
no useless one, I close with an eleventh 
commandment, greater than all : Cultivate 
a friendly feeling towards books. 

A great author, Maurice, wrote a volume 
named ** The Friendship of Books." It in- 
dicates a very real thing. Milton went so 
far in giving personality to a book that he 
said, " Almost as well kill a man as a book." 
Books are our most steadfast friends ; they 
are our resource in loneliness ; they go with 
us on our journeys ; they await our return ; 
they are our best company ; they are a ref- 
uge in pain ; they breathe peace upon our 
troubles; they await age as ministers of 
youth and cheer ; they bring the whole 
world of men and things to our feet ; they 
put us in the centre of the world ; they sum- 
mon us away from our narrow life to their 
greatness, from our ignorance to their wis- 
dom, from our j)artial or distempered vision 
to their calm and universal verdicts. There 
may be something of discord in their min- 
gled voices, but the undertone sjjeaks for 
truth and virtue and faith. 



VIII. 

AMUSEMENTS. 



** I^t him not attempt to regulate other people's pleasuros 
by his own tastes." — IIeu'S. 

♦'Ami the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls 
playiug ill the streets thereof." — Zeciiakiau. 

"I can easily persuade myself, that, if the world were 
free, — free, I mean, of themselves, —■ brought np, all, out 
of work into the pure inspiration of truth and charity, new 
fonns of personal and intellectual beauty would apjwar, and 
society itself reveal (he Orphic movement." — lit'sn.VKLL. 

"The only happiness a brave man ever troubled himself 
with asking much about was, happiness enough to get his 
work done." — Caklyle. 



VIII. 



AMUSEMENTS. 



I WOULD prefer, if it were possible, to 
avoid > entering on the question as to tlie 
right or wrong of certain amusements, be- 
cause I think it a yery poor and profitless 
discussion. It were better to take the sub- 
ject out of the plane of scruple and allow- 
ance, — so far and no farther, this much 
and no more, — and lift it up into a nobler 
atmosphere. Instead of haggling oyer the 
proper allowance or kind of amusements, I 
would haye one rather indifferent to the 
whole subject — aboye it, in short. If you 
are animated by right principles, and haye 
awakened to the dignity of life, the sub- 
ject of amusements may be left to settle it- 
self. It is not a difficult, unless it is made 
a primary, question. When, however, 
amusements dominate the life ; when they 
consume any considerable fraction of one's 
time or income ; when they are found to 



186 



AMUSEMENTS. 



be giving a tone to the tlionglits ; when 
they pass the line of moderation, and run 
into excess; when they begin to be in any 
degree a necessity, having shaped the mind 
to their form, they grow vexatious, and be- 
come a dillicult factor in tlie adjustment 
of conduct. 

/ There is a famous saying of St. Augus- 
tine, " Love and do all things," that covers 
the subject, though its generalization may 
be too broad for common use. Still, I hate 
to descend from tlie lofty principle that 
should guide us in the matter to its details. 
I wish young men were so devoted to their 
callings that they would feel but slight in- 
terest in the technical amusements of the 
day. I wish they had such a sense of the 
value of time, when devoted to books, that 
they would not waste their evenings before 
minstrel troupes, or in games of any sort. 
I wish you were so sensitive to place and 
company that you would avoid billiard sa- 
loons. I wish you were so thrifty of money, 
and so careful of health, and so sensible on 
several other points, that the all-night ball 
would be out of question. I wish you had 
so much of that fine feeling called aristo- 
cratic that you would decline to mingle so- 



AMUSEMENTS. 187 

cially in company that is open to all on pay- 
ment of money, — a doorkeeper and a ticket 
the only introduction and barrier. I wish 
you had so lofty an ambition, such a deter- 
mination to get on and up in the world, that 
you would give all these things the go-by 
for the most. 

But these wishes are keyed too high for 
realization, and I must speak in another 
way, coming nearer to the casuistry of the 
subject, though I dislike that view of it. 
Your demand is for distinctions and drawn 
lines, and definite rehearsal of the innocent 
and forbidden. Well, if we make distinc- 
tions, let us at least make true ones. 

The present perplexity largely comes from 
accepting, in a hereditary w^ay, distinctions 
that once may have been necessary, but are 
so no longer. The amusements and vices 
of English society under the Stuarts were 
so interwoven that it was easier to sweep 
out the whole by a single act of heroic pro- 
test than it was to enter upon the nice work 
of separation. It may have been wise social 
econoni}^, but it was a mistake to insert this 
indiscriminate cleansing of society into the 
fabric of religion. The attitude of the Pu- 
ritan was, — I will forego all pleasures till 



188 AMUSEMENTS. 

I have crusliod out Cavalier vices. It was 
60 akin tu religion tliat it became identified 
with it. Vices and pleasures were put in 
the same category. There was some justi- 
fication of Macaulay's remark that the Pu- 
ritans objected to bear-baiting, not because 
it tormented tiie bear, but because it gave 
pleasure to tlie spectators. But the stress 
that constrained the Puritan passed away, 
leaving a set of distinctions as to amuse- 
ments, all interwoven with religion, but 
forming no essential part of it, and having 
no basis in cN-ar thought. Hence all moral 
training in New England has had a large 
negative element ; its sign has been the not 
doing certain things. Afoanwhile we have 
been learning that our Faith, which ulti- 
mately regulates such matters, is not keyed 
to sueh a note, but is a gift, and a spirit that 
transforms all things. Our traditions and 
our knowledge have come into conflict. One 
side says, it has always been held wrong to 
do this and that, and therefore we must ab- 
stain. The other side denies the binding 
force of such logic, and, as always happens 
when barriers are thrown down, rushes into 
extremes. On one side is bigotry, on the 
other license. Each mistakes — one in ap- 



AMUSEMENTS. 189 

plying tlie restrictions of religion to things 
not essentially evil, the other in forgetting 
that innocent things may not be the best, 
and may be used as very bad things. All 
the grand emphasis of religion, however mis- 
taken, has been on one side, all the eager- 
ness of human nature on the other side. It 
is not strange that, in such a state of the 
question, young persons do about as they 
choose. Truer distinctions will be made 
when we fully learn that our Faith is not a 
system of restriction, but a bringer-in of 
higher life ; not a rule, but an inspiration. 
When the order and habits of the Faith are 
established the question of amusements will 
be a very easy one to settle practically. It 
tells us that whatever is not in itself evil, 
whatever is not in excess, whatever does not 
naturally minister to vice, are free. It does 
not, however, say that it is best to use this 
liberty to the full, nor that you are not to 
come into waj^s of thinking that shut amuse- 
ments out of all power to tempt or injure. 
President-elect Garfield is wholly free to 
pull in a boat-race, but higher considera- 
tions may render it unwise that he should 
do so; and, having weightier matters on 
hand, it is not probable that his desires run 
strongly in that direction. 



190 AMUSEMENTS. 

The debate practically centres upon danc- 
ing, cards, and thejitre-going. In speakinf» 
of them -Nve shall indulge in no equivoca- 
tion, no paltering with false reasons, no 
throwing of dust into the eyes in order 
to gain time, no use of arguments that 
break down when applied, without essen- 
tial change, to other things. In illustra- 
tion, — cards are condemned because they 
are the tools of gamblers and lead to 
gambling, but billiards, whifh are equally 
the t(K)ls of gamblers and are played even 
less frequently without gambling than cards, 
have no general and traditional condemna- 
tion. Such reasoning and distinctions do 
infinite harm. Nothing so tends to break 
down all sense of right and wrong, as basing 
conduct on false reasons, and making dis- 
tinctions that are without reasons. 

In these three things I think it wiser to 
discriminate than to reject. I grant that 
they do not represent very high phases of 
conduct, and that an atmosphere not the 
purest invests them; still, it is better to 
draw the line between use and abuse than 
to turn them altogether out of life. It may 
be said that it is easier and safer to reject 
them, than to apply the distinction. It 



AMUSEMENTS. 191 

ought not to be easier to use wrong reason 
than right reason. All application of truth 
to societ}^ is a matter of faith. It is better 
to trust an untried truth, than to work a 
prudential fallacy. Besides, practically, 
the question has settled itself by usage. 
Nearly all who feel inclined to do so, dance, 
and play with cards, and go to the opera 
and theatre. The circles are very small in 
which these amusements are totally inhib- 
ited ; and, in these cases, one is often forced 
to suspect that the reason of the abstaining 
lies in their positions rather than in their 
consciences. 

The reason for this almost general indul- 
gence in these amusements is that they are 
not regarded as essentially evil, or incon- 
sistent with correct principles. It is plainly 
wiser to make a distinction between use and 
abuse than to hold fast the door of prohibi- 
tion after everybody has gone through. 

What then of dancing? A very beau- 
tiful and simple amusement, based on the 
mysterious laws of rhythm, — the body 
responding with the grace of motion to the 
measure of music. It is not strange that it 
has been used in religion. So fine a thing, 
grounded in such sanctity of natural law, 



192 AMUSEMENTS. 

sboiilcl be kept at the highest point of 
beauty ami purity. Any association of it 
with what is vile, or coarse, or excessive, is 
a profanation. It is, moreover, .is a fine 
wine amongst the pleasures, and is not for 
daily use. Its practice is an instruction of 
the body, teacliing command of tlio per- 
son, and grace and dignity of bearing. Its 
period is in youth, while rhytlim has its 
seat in the blood, and not after it has passed 
into the thought. Its place is the home, 
where parents greet only guests. So fine a 
thing requires the most delicate and gra- 
cious ordering. The hall at which a door- 
keeper takes tickets bought in the market, 
is plainly not a fit place for a pleasure so 
pure and natural, and, because natural, liable 
to abuse. Of all things dancing should not 
be miscellaneous. There can be no objec- 
tion to visiting a well-conducted circus, but 
one should hesitate if it exposed one to an 
introduction to the clowns and equestri- 
ennes. 

There are objections of utmost weight to 
be urged against the all-night ball. Tiie 
general and unanswerable criticism to be 
made upon it is that of excess. The phy- 
sician, the teacher, the employer, the parent, 



AMUSEMENTS. 193 

the unprejudiced looker-on, eacli brings in 
his specific protest. It can be tolerated 
only as you tolerate a Avbolesale violation of 
pb3'sical and social laws. 

What of card-playing ? I suppose if any- 
thing could be annihilated without sensible 
loss to human welfare it would be that 
small package of paste-board known as 
cards ; but we had best not pray for it lest 
some worse thing take its place. Their 
abuse is immense, but they have a use 
that is at least allowable. An abuse ought 
not to be suffered to destroy a use, except 
in rarest cases ; it is not the way to prevent 
evil. The use will constantly be clamoring 
for return, bringing back also the abuse. 
The wiser way is to separate them by some 
principles of common sense. In this matter 
the distinction is easily made. As a house- 
hold amusement, what can be more inno- 
cent ? In point of fact, boys, who from the 
first are accustomed to cards, commonly out- 
grow them, or hold them as of slightest 
moment. But stolen bread is sweet, and 
many a boy has been morally broken down 
through yielding to well-nigh irresistible 
temptation to play an innocent game that 
was prohibited as sinful in his home. There 



194 AMUSEMENTS. 

is an amazing lack of practical wisdom in 
this iiiatter. '^I cannot persuade my boys 
to jniu me in a game of whist," said a 
respectable gentleman of his grown-up sons. 
His neiglibor forbade cards (I take this 
twofold note from life) and his four sons 
grew into gamblers. Gamesters do not 
come from liouseholds in wliich games are 
the trivial sports of childhood. Their fasci- 
nation evaporates with tlie dew of youth. 
An amusement in early life, a recreation in 
age, a thing of indilTerence in the working 
period of life, such is the place of cards. 
Their abuse is very great. As a means of 
gambling, as a waster of time, as taking tlie 
place of rational society, — for a whist-party 
is an organization of inanity, — they cannot 
be too sharjdy condemned. 

Young men should govern themselves 
very strictly in this thing. Don't play in 
the cars ; gamblers do, gentlemen do not, 
as a rule. Never play in public places, it is 
the just mark of a loafer. Refuse to devote 
whole evenings to whist, life is too short 
and books are too near. Rate the whole 
matter but lowly, and have such uses for 
your time and faculties that you can say to 
others, and to yourself, T have other con- 
cerns to attend to. 



AMUSEMENTS. 195 

As to billicircls, it is commonly miderstood 
that gentlemen sensitive to their surroand- 
ings feel obliged to discard them for the 
most part. In itself a beautiful game, it 
has been almost impossible to keep it clean 
and wholesome. Private tables are little 
used ; public saloons are the haunts of well- 
dressed loafers, and the atmosphere is dis- 
tinctly charged with small gambling. I have 
always suspected the title of an eminent 
physician to his reputation, since I compared 
the elegance of his billiard-room with the 
meagreness of his library. 

But the war of opinions is waged chiefly 
over the opera and theatre. If the question 
were to take the form of indiscrimate and 
habitual attendance upon them, it would 
admit of quick answer. There is an old 
criticism of the stage that is not easily an- 
swered. It is twofold ; the appeal to the 
sensibilities is excessive ; the scenic cannot 
be made a vehicle of moral teaching, because 
the medium is one of unreality, — in fine, 
because it is acting. If one were to choose 
the surest and speediest method of reducing 
himself to a mush of sensibility let him 
steadily frequent the opera and theatre. 
What emotion do they not stir? What 



196 AMUSEMENTS. 

good purpose do the}^ confirm? I loll opens 
on the stage and swallows up Don Gio- 
vanni, but what rou^ leaves the house with 
altered purpose? The play may contain a 
moral lesson, but in conveying truth every- 
thing depends upon the medium ; the worst 
possible medium is one that is false. On 
the stage nothing is real ; everything from 
painted scene to costumed actor is ficti- 
tious, except the bare sentiment of the 
play, which shares the fate of its mcdimn, 
and is lost with it behind the last fall of 
the curtain. 

The claim of the theatre as a school of 
morals is false; not because it is immoral, 
but because it cannot, from its own nature, 
be a teacher of morals. It nuiy have just 
claims, but they are not of this sort. 

The opera gives us music in nearly the 
highest degree of the art. Human society 
will never shut itself off from the realization 
of any true art, nor ought it to do so. Its 
instinctive course is to insist on the art, and 
trust to time and change to rid it of evil as- 
sociation. A like claim may be made for 
the theatre ; it is a field for the expression 
of the highest literature through a genuine 
art. Here is a solid fact that will never be 



AM USEMENTS. 1 97 

wiped out. The stage lias stood for three 
thousand years because it has a basis in 
human nature. It represents an art, and 
society never drops an art. 

The abuses that have clustered about it 
are enormous. In evil days it sinks to the 
bottom of the scale of decency, and in best 
days it hardly rises to the average. Still, 
it reflects society, and with the growing 
habit of attendance it has steadily gained 
in respectability. A long journey, however, 
is before it in this direction. ^' Oh, reform 
it altogether," prays Hamlet. But the drift 
is plain, and the final solution is apparent. 
Society will not drop the stage, but will de- 
mand that it shall rise to its own standards, 
and be as pure as itself ; decent people will 
have a decent stage. 

I have written frankly, because I think it 
better to give young men the true view of 
the subject, than to shut them up in pru- 
dential inclosures that are full of logical 
gaps. 

It does not by any means follow that it 
is wise or right for a young man to give 
himself up to the habit of indiscriminate 
theatre-going. Aside from moral contami- 
nation incident to the average theatre, the 



198 AMUSEMENTS. 

influence intellectually is degrading. Its 
lessons are morbid, distorted, and superficial; 
the}^ do not mirror life. *' Seems, madam," 
says Hamlet, " I know not seems." Neither 
do any of us recognize the seeming with any 
power. 

But the crucial question comes at last: 
vSliall we never visit the theatre ? When 
the place is decent in its associations, when 
the play is pure and has some true worth, 
when the acting has the merit of art, I 
know of no principle that forbids it. But 
if, under these conditions, you S(;e fit to at- 
tend, let it be no reason for visiting the 
average theatre, nor let it represent a habit. 
The technical amusements should not bo 
made habits; it is recreation — a very dif- 
ferent thing — that is to be made habitual. 

Our answer provokes the straight ques- 
tion : Would it not be better to make it a 
matter of rule and principle, and abstain 
altogether ? We can make rules, but not 
principles ; they are made for us. The prin- 
ciple here consists in distinguishing between 
use and abuse, between the bad and the 
innocent, and not in a blind rejection of 
the whole matter. As to the rule, it is a 
nobler and wiser way of treating young men 



AMUSEMENTS. 199 

to ask them to observe rational distinctions, 
than to shut tliem up to rules tliey have no 
mind to observe. 

I have said so much on amusements, 
chiefly in order to get them into a region of 
clear thought ; but I have another and more 
difficult end in view, namely, to take you 
altogether away from them, or to lead you 
to regard them as but trivial and secondary 
matters. They are not of the substance of 
life, they do not face the heights of our 
nature, but are turned toward the child-side 
of it. The dance, the game, the play, all 
quite innocent in themselves and involving 
something of art, are not the stuff out of 
which manhood is built, nor must they enter 
largely into it. We naturally connect them 
with early years, and expect them to drop 
their claims when life fully asserts itself. 
It seems not quite in the true order when 
they largely engage the interest of men and 
women who are in the midst of their years. 
Still this is a matter of individual taste and 
judgment. Dr. Dale of Birmingham tells 
us of an English fox-hunter who declared 
that " the keeping of dogs was the noblest 
of Aall ^occupations." 

I wage no crusade against these amuse- 



200 AMUSEMENTS. 

ments ; I am only solicitous lest you rate 
them too highly, Jind weigh them too care- 
lessly. It is painful to see a young man of 
sound conscience in a flutter of question 
if he may engage in this or that amuse- 
ment. Diogenes does not long pause over 
him. Two young men go to their teacher, 
or some wise friend, for advice; one asks 
if it is wrong to dance, or ])lay with cards, 
or go to the theatre. His fritnd tt-lls him 
that it is not necessarily wrong to do these 
things, and, with a word of caution, some- 
what sadly sends him away. The other 
young man asks him if lie can put him in 
the way of getting a list of the Roman em- 
perors, or a fair estimate of Dean Swift, 
or the various theories of the Great Pyra- 
mid, or the " Life of Stephenson," as he has 
some thought of becoming a railroad man. 
It needs no prophet to foretell which will 
be brakeman, and which president of the 
road. 

You have already detected my purpose. 
It is not to mete the bounds in amusements, 
but to turn you away from any deep interest 
in them. They are free to you in a wise 
wa}^ but you have other business in hand. 

It is not without reason that I call you to 



AMUSEMENTS. 201 

the severer estimate of the subject. As mat- 
ters are going, society seems to be shaping it- 
self into an organization for generating the 
greatest possible amount of pleasure. The 
commonest figure to-day — I fear he is al- 
most typical — is the young man demanding, 
as first of all considerations, that he shall be 
amused ; amused he must be at whatever 
cost, and if society and education and church 
are not shaped to -that end he will have 
nought to do with them. Meanwhile church 
and college and social life hasten to com- 
ply, suggesting that the main business of 
each is to keep up a "show." One wishes 
with Douglas Jerrold " that the world would 
get tired of this eternal guffaw." Let me 
say to the young men who read these images, 
that while the many are amusing them- 
selves, a few earnest ones turn aside and 
seize the prizes of life. I would have you 
of this number. I would persuade you to ex- 
tricate yourselves from the giggling crowd, 
and hold that life may be worth living even 
if it does not provide you with a stunning 
amusement every twenty-four hours. I 
would have you strong and clear-headed 
enough to enter the protest of your example 
against the insidious, emasculating idea so 



202 AMUSEMENTS. 

prevalent, that the main object in life is ''to 
have a good time." I would have j^ou real- 
ize that " a soul sodden with pleasure " is 
the most utterly lost and degraded soul that 
can be. When pleasure rules the life, mind, 
sensibility, health shrivel and waste, till at 
last, and not tardily, no joy in earth or 
heaven can move the worn-out heart to re- 
sponse. 

But shall a young man have no anuise- 
ments ? He is not shut off from any that 
sound sense and a high ambition admit of; 
but if these governing principles are not 
kept at the fore-front of life, nothing is ad- 
missible. Just now amusement seems to 
be primary, while, in truth, it is the last 
tiling about which we need to concern our- 
selves. What does a bird, or an angel, 
think of it ? Each wings his way, and his 
flight is his joy. 

Mr. Ruskin touches our theme most aptly: 
" All real and wholesome enjoyments possi- 
ble to man have been just as possible to 
him since first he was made of the earth 
as they are now. To watch the corn grow 
and the blossoms set, to draw hard breath 
over plowshare and spade, to read, to think, 
to love, to hope, to pray; these are the 



AMUSEMENTS. 203 

things that make men happy." Mr. Ruskin 
is too lofty, too severe, you say ; he is play- 
ing his role of grand grumbler. We find 
ourselves after this long discussion simply 
exhorted to noble feelings and ambitions, 
and left befogged in clouds of high senti- 
ment ; life after all is made up of real acts ; 
we want to know exactly with what form 
of pleasure we may offset our hard toil of 
brain or hands, — how we shall let off this 
exuberance of vitality that bubbles within, 

— how we may gratify this instinct of play 

— natural as laughter itself. I will make 
what answer I can. 

The technical amusements that have been 
spoken of, — the stage, the dance, the games, 
and things of like nature, — are not to be 
regarded as true recreation or play. They 
do not rest one, they consuaie vitality 
rather than furnish a channel for it, and 
they cannot, from their nature, be closely 
enough ingrafted with daily life. They 
may serve as an occasional pleasure, but 
they cannot afford constant recreation, 
which every one must have, and can hardly 
have in excess. I would make the broad- 
est and most emphatic distinction between 
pleasure derived from these amusements 



204 AMUSEMENTS. 

and enjoyment drawn from otlnu' sources. 
I mean, by the distinction, getting our own 
natures at work in simple and pleasurable 
ways instead of looking for external excite- 
ment. 

I may seem to have reached a very prosy 
conclusion, but I claim that nu)tion in the 
open air, under clear skies, and in close con- 
tact with nature, is the finest and keenest 
recreation possible to a healtliy-minded, full- 
blooded man. When it is not so regarded 
it is because neither mind nor body are in 
normal condition. The distinguishing mark 
of those who are devoted to the amusements, 
as contrasted with those who delight in 
open-air recreation, is lisilessness^ — a very 
common thing as we note the gait, air, 
and voice of many young men. The grand- 
est figure of a man seen in Great Britain 
for a hundred years was Christopher North. 
In the chapter on Health we described him 
as running amongst the Higldands for 
hours, exulting in what De Quincey calls 
*' the glory of motion." Wilson knew what 
pleasure was in other forms, but he knew 
nothing higher than this — a glorious man- 
hood intoxicated with the wine of overflow- 
incr life. 



AMUSEMENTS. 205 

When Dr. Waj^land was asked what 
pleasures he woukl recommend, he said, 
" Take a walk." It was not so ver}^ pros}^ 
advice, nor will it seem so to any one who 
has not sunk into a prosy state of mind and 
body. Thoreaii considered a walk the height 
of felicity. My point is, if j^ou would get 
into close contact with nature and culti- 
yate the intimacies and sympathies that 
look in that direction, you would win an 
enjoyment far finer than that to be got from 
the technical amusements, with their fever- 
ish accessories. Climb the hills about you, 
— Hol^^oke, Wachusett, Greylock, the Pali- 
sades. What do you know of the ravines 
and water-falls within a ten-mile radius ? 
Do you know the haunts and habits of the 
animals that live in the forests ? Do you 
know the trees, the flowers and their 
times ? Do you know the exultation that 
comes with standing on mountain tops, and 
the tender awe that dwells in thick woods 
and deep glens, and the music of waters in 
these still heights ? And do you know how 
profound and sweet is sleep after a day in 
the woods ? An hour, or a day, spent in 
the open air, in saddle, or better, on foot, 
with cheery company, or alone with an 



206 AMUSEMENTS. 

easy, care-discarding mind, yields recrea- 
tion that will be satisfying just in the de- 
gree in wliich the nature is sound. 

If any say, This is well, but not enough, 
or it is not practicable, let me suggest that 
they find a hohhy. There is a provision for 
one in nearly every man ; seek it out, and 
gratify it wisely. If a horse, let it be that, 
steering wide of all jockeying and the vul- 
garity of the race-course ; if animal pets, 
nothing is more wholesome. And there 
are the athletic sports and the broader field 
of art, fine and mechanical, the turning- 
lathe, the garden, music, pictures, books, 
science, — the keen and unanxious joy of 
the amateur awaits you in each. 

Every young man, remembering Shake- 
speare's wise words, *' Home-bred youths 
Lave ever homely wits," should now and 
then travel. You say traveling is expen- 
sive ; but reckon what possibly you may 
have spent the last year in cigars, beer, 
balls, theatricals, confectionery, " treats," 
and gew-gaws of dress, and see how far the 
sum would have taken you, — to Washing- 
ton, or Niagara, or Quebec, or London, 
perchance. 

As our last and weifjhtiest word on the 



AMUSEMENTS. 207 

subject, I would press the distinction be- 
tween amusements and enjoyment. One 
is pleasure manufactured and served up for 
us ; the other is the satisfaction that flows 
from the sportive action of our own facul- 
ties. In other words, amuse yourself in- 
stead of depending upon others. Learn the 
joy of the exercise of your own powers 
rather than offer yourself to be played upon 
from without for the sake of a new sensa- 
tion. 

From ivitJiin out is the order of all life, 
from smallest plant to man. And because 
it is the order of life it is also the order of 

joy- 



IX. 
FAITH. 



"Fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor nostrum, douec 
requiescat in Te." — Augustine. 

" Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eter- 
nal life." — {Said to the Christ.) 

" Blest is the man whose heart and hands are pure ! 
He hath no sickness that he shall not cure, 
No sorrow that he may not well endure : 
His feet are steadfast and bis hope is sure. 

" Oh, blest is he who ne'er hath sold his soul, 
Whose will is perfect, and whose word is whole; 
"Who hath not paid to common-sense the toll 
Of self-disgrace, nor owned the world's control ! 

•' Through clouds and shadows of the darkest night, 
He will not lose a glimmering of the light ; 
Nor, though the sun of day be shrouded quite, 
Swerve from th-j narrow path to left or right." 

Joirx Addingtox Svmonds. 

•'If you travel through the world well, you may find cities 
without walls, without literature, without kings, moncA'less 
and such as desire bo coin ; which know not wliat theatres or 
public halls of bodily exercise mean ; but never was there, 
nor ever shall there be, any one city seen without temple, 
church, or chapel. Nay, methinks a man should sooner find 
a city built in the air, without any plot of ground whereon 
it is seated, than that any commonwealth altogether void of 
religion should either be first established or afterivard pre- 
served and maintained in that estate. This is that containeth 
and holdeth together all human society ; this is the foundation, 
stay, and prop of all." — Plutakch. 



IX. 

EAITH. 

Caelyle, in that great address of his to 
the students of Edinburgh, says : " No na- 
tion that did not contemplate this wonderful 
universe with an awe-stricken and reveren- 
tial feeling that there was a great unknown, 
omnipotent, and all-wise, and all-virtuous 
Being, superintending all men in it, and all 
interests in it — no nation ever came to very- 
much, nor did any man either, who forgot 
that. If a man did forget that, he forgot 
the most important part of his mission in 
this world." 

I do not propose in this chapter to do 
more than follow out the thought of this 
vigorous utterance. 

It will indeed never do to forget " the all- 
wise, all- virtuous Being " who superintends 
human society, nor the fact that we have 
our origin and therefore our destiny in Him. 
Whether evolution be true or false, or partly 



212 FAITH. 

both, men must never doubt that they are 
made in the image of God. Hence the Bible 
opens with the creation of the world and of 
man — the starting-point of philosophy and 
religion, as well as of the physical world. 
Whether those first pages be regarded as 
typical, or figurative, or traditional, or myth- 
ical, they are the profoundest and truest 
words that we know. No great thinker 
treats them slightly ; no man can afford to 
forget their personal lesson. They gave 
the greatest English poet — after one — his 
theme. Milton was no Puritan fanatic turn- 
ing the crude and harsh theology of his day 
into majestic verse, but a seer whose open 
eyes rested habitually upon the summits of 
truth. Setting himself to the deliberate 
task of composing a masterpiece of poetry, 
he selected as the greatest j3ossible theme, 
the creation of man. Dante wrote of des- 
tiny, Milton of origin, and so comprehended 
both. Michael Angelo attempted upon can- 
vas the same theme. On the walls of the 
Sistine Chapel he strove to tell how man 
became a living soul. The created Adam 
lies upon a sloping bank in the midst of a 
dull and desert solitude — nerveless, lax, an 
animal only, waiting for his completion into 



FAITH. 213 

man. Above him in the air is the majestic 
figure of the Deit}^ whose* outstretched hand 
touches witli one finger the upreaching hand 
of Adam, and through the touch, the electric 
spark of spiritual life is conveyed, and Adam 
becomes a living soul. 

The topmost minds of the world do not 
repeat this history in poetry and painting 
without reason. It is the world's strongest 
assertion of the essential oneness of man 
with God, — asserted by genius because gen- 
ius asserts the highest truths. Young men 
always revere genius ; each w^ears something 
of the glory of the other. Hence they 
should keep in mind that it never speaks 
with such unanimity and emphasis as when 
it declares the divine origin of man. I find 
in a recent novel, a very clear and strong 
statement of the incompleteness of man 
apart from God. A professor of mathe- 
matics upon his dying bed is speaking to a 
pupil of great force and talent, who is dis- 
posed to push his way in the world without 
any recognition of God. The dying mathe- 
matician says : " No man is competent to 
calculate accurately until he has as perfect 
a conception of two-ness as he has of one- 
ness. You cannot estimate things correctly, 



214 FAITH. 

unless you take into jowv calculation another 
as well as yourself. You are but one in- 
teger. Handling, however perfectly, one 
factor, your calculations are extremely lim- 
ited. The other factor is God. Sta}^, I err, 
you are not a unit ! You are, I am, but zero ! 
that is, apart from God. Admitting him, 
all other factors follow, not otherwise. 
Remember what I tell you, this is the sum 
of all ; separate quality from quantity, and 
your result is wrong ; omit eternity in your 
estimate as to area, and your conclusion is 
wrong ; fasten your attention exclusively 
upon yourself and leave out God, and your 
equation is wrong, false, and utterly wrong." 
I do not think it is too much to expect 
that young men will apprehend these rea- 
sons for a positive recognition of God. If 
the reasons are profound, they are also 
seK-asserting. When presented, you say, 
I know them already. 

"So close is glory to our dust, 
So near is God to man ; 
Wlien duty whispers low, Thou must, 
The youth replies, I can." 

This inner voice, declaring for God and 
duty, is often hushed, often unheeded, and 
so at last comes to be seldom heard — a 



FAITH. 215 

sad and strange thing to happen. I am 
aware that young men have a habit of 
treating matters of faith in a slighting way, 
as not quite lying in the line of manliness. 
I will not say that you have not some rea- 
son for thinking so. As sometimes pre- 
sented, it is anything but attractive to a 
clear-headed, brave man, — now as a mere 
matter • of future safety, bare of a single 
noble feature ; now as a thin and pretty 
sentiment, void of all robust thought and 
practical duty; now a mesh of doctrinal 
subtil ties, or a tissue of traditions and dog- 
mas. But these phases of the great subject 
are rapidly passing away. Whether past 
or not, we have only to do with the eternal 
truth they obscure. I invite you into the 
company of the greatest and best, who 
never reject or slight this fact called Chris- 
tianity ; or if any do so it is because of the 
pressure of some special adverse influence, 
as m the case of Huxley and Clifford and 
Spencer — men overweighted with the sci- 
entific habit, " dazzled," as Plato said, " by 
a too near look at material things," or it is 
due to an ill-balanced nature, as in Hume, 
wbo was too cold to feel an emotion. It is 
always safe to trust the poets ; not much 



216 FAITH. 

moral truth has got into the world except 
through them, and never have they put the 
indorsement of their inspiration upon any- 
great error. They stand on the highest 
summits of life, and therefore see fartliest ; 
they live closest to nature, and therefore 
understand her most thoroughly ; they are 
the fullest endowed with gifts, and there- 
fore best understand man and his needs. 
They speak with one voice in this matter. 
Lucretius in antiquity, — a naturalist rather 
than a poet, — and Shelley in modern times, 
a man preternaturally sensitive to falseness 
and so repelled by the hypocrisy of his age ; 
— these are nearly the only unbelievers 
amongst the poets. Put by the side of Lu- 
cretius, Wordsworth, who seems to have 
written no line except in that Presence 

*' Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; " 

or by the side of Shelley, the not only finer 
but more robust Tennyson, who prefaces 
the greatest of modern poems with prayer 
to the — 

" Strong Son of God, immortal Love." 

It is a fact of immense significance that the 
poets thus bow with reverence before the 



FAITH. 217 

Christian faith ; for the poet is a seer ; it 
is his gift and function to declare the reality 
of things. Now Christianity, in its broad- 
est definition, is simply the reality of things. 
It is a setting forth of the true order of hu- 
manity. When a man grasps this secret, 
he must accept Christianity. He does vio- 
lence to himself if he refuses. 

I have all along in these pages had in 
mind those who have begun to think. I 
ask you to think here — not alone, nor yet 
with any sect — but with the great souls. 
If they are mistaken, if they see amiss, the 
whole world is blind. 

, But if, intellectually, we are forced to 
accept the Christian idea, we must carry it 
into the conscience where we encounter 
that word which Carlyle declares to be the 
mightiest of all words — ought., and by 
which convictions are transmuted into du- 
ties. You cannot build a wall about your 
logical and critical faculties and say, " Here 
will I entertain my faith." There can be 
no wall, nor line even, between the intellect 
and the moral nature. When universal 
truths like those of Christianity come to 
man they spread throughout his whole be- 
ing. Intellectual conviction means moral 



218 FAITH. 

assent. The conviction sweeps like a wind 
into every recess of his nature and sets to 
vibrating tliose chords that deehire the ought 
of duty. And so we are borne on to the 
higher sentiments of love and adoration and 
spiritual sympathy. If there is a God, I 
must love liim. I must pour out my soul 
u])on him. I must worship at his feet. I 
must be at one with him. The logic of our 
nature, with tender but relentless force, 
drives us to this final issue. 

'' When duty whispers low, Thou must, 
The youth replies, I can." 

(1.) My first practical suggestion in re- 
gard to faith is that you treat it earnestly 
and never otherwise. If you have wit to 
scatter broadly, withhold it from this theme. 
No sound nature ever makes a mock of it. 
Your true-hearted, fine-grained man puts 
off his shoes at the door of a mosque as 
devoutly as any Moslem ; he treads the 
aisles of a cathedral as softly as any Ro- 
manist ; he despises no incense ; he sneers 
at no idol. He may deny, but he will not 
jest. The sneer is crucial ; bring one who 
indulges in it to the test and you will find 
him crude in thought and coarse in feeling. 
I know how common it is and how much 



FAITH. 219 

there is to provoke it in the humanlj^-weak 
forms of worship and eccentricities of belief ; 
still, the most deluded Seventh-day Bap- 
tist, or Sandemanian literalist, ranks higher 
than one who scoffs at them. I like to hear 
one pronounce the name of God with a sub- 
dued awe, and to see the cast of thought 
overspread the features when eternal things 
are named. I like to see a delicate and 
quiet handling of sacred truths — as you 
speak the name of your mother in heaven. 
I might say that this is the way a gentle- 
man bears himself towards religion, but I 
would rather have you feel that it is the 
treatment due to the majesty of the subject. 
(2.) If you happen to be skeptical, do 
not formulate your doubts, nor regard them 
as convictions. Doubt is almost a natural 
phase of life ; but as certainly as it is nat- 
ural is it also temporary, unless it is un- 
wisely wrought into conduct. The chief 
danger is lest one, blinded and confused by 
the " excess of light " with which life dawns, 
may come to think that one is not amena- 
ble to the laws of morality ; that, having 
no chart or compass, he may drift with the 
tides. This is not good moral seamanship. 
When storms have swept away compass 



220 FAITH. 

and quadrant and chart, the sailor still 
steers the ship and watches for some open- 
ing in the clouds that may reveal a guiding 
star ; he scans the waters for sight of some 
fellow voyager, and at night listens for the 
possible roar of breakers, and so, by re- 
doubling his seamanship at all points, finds 
at length his course. When one finds him- 
self in this skeptical mood, he should govern 
himself in the strictest manner, using what- 
ever of truth and moral sense he has 
left with utmost fidelity, doing the one 
thing that he still knows to be right. One 
may doubt, and the whole apparatus of his 
moral nature remain sound ; if one works 
that aright, one cannot long remain astray. 
There is wonderful light-generating j)ower 
in good conduct. " I am skeptical ; there- 
fore I have nothing to do with Bible or 
church or sermon ; I am skeptical, therefore 
I am not bound to the moral courses taught 
by religion ; I am skeptical, therefore, hav- 
ing no faith or law, I will be a law unto 
myself; " — this is both poor thinking and 
bad morality. Skepticism by its nature as 
simply doubt., as not even negation, requires 
that it should not be made a rule or reason 
for conduct. It may possibly be rational to 



FAITH. 221 

act from a negation, but not from a doubt. 
It is worse than building upon the sand ; it 
is building on chaos. 

It is well to remember, as Plutarch tells 
us on the prefatory page of the chapter, 
that nothing so universally engages the at- 
tention of men as religion ; hence, nothing 
will bear so long study. Its final verdicts 
are reached only through experience. A 
young man pronounced in unbelief is pre- 
mature ; he has decided that Jupiter has no 
moons without waiting to look through a 
telescope. The experience of life nearly 
always works towards the confirmation of 
faith. It is the total significance of life 
that it reveals God to man ; and life only 
can do this; — neither thought, nor dem- 
onstration, nor miracle, but life only, weav- 
ing its threads of daily toil and trial and 
joy into a pattern on which at last is in- 
scribed the name, God. It is a fact of im- 
mense significance that Emerson, who in 
early years looked askance at this name, 
suffers himself, in his old age, to be called 
a Christian theist. I ask young men to 
wait and hear what life has to say before 
they formulate their doubts. The years 
have a message for you that you must not 
fail to hear. 



222 FAiTn. 

(3.) Be intelligent in regard to Chris- 
tianity. 

An eminent American statesman, tliough 
an unbeliever, dail}^ read the Bible, on the 
ground that every citizen should be familiar 
with the religion of his country. Had he 
gone a step farther and read it because it 
contained the religion of the civilized world, 
he would have read from a higher consider- 
ation, and perhaps to better purpose. For 
this faith marches at the head of the army 
of progress. It is found beside the most 
refined life, the freest government, the pro- 
foundest philosophy, the noblest poetry, the 
purest hunumity. I think we are all of us 
bound to have a clear conception of this 
fact that thus possesses and dominates hu- 
man society. I do not think it too much to 
expect of young men that they shall know 
its external history, and from that go on and 
raise the question. What is t|^e secret of the 
power of Christianity ? Why does it lay 
strongest hold of the best races? Why 
does it pave the way to freedom and social 
elevation ? Why does it make a man bet- 
ter ? Why does it have the peculiar effect 
of ennobling and dignifying character? 
What is the subtle power by which it 



FAITH. 223 

breathes peace upon troubled hearts ? Why 
does it make the path of daily duty an easy 
one to tread ? What is it that makes the 
epithet Christian mean the best of its kind, 
whether applied to a civilization, to a com- 
munity, to individual conduct, or to an in- 
ward temper ? Not long ago a ship was 
wrecked upon the reefs of an island in the 
Pacific. The sailors, escaping to land, 
feared lest they might fall into the hands of 
savages. One climbed a bluff to reconnoi- 
tre ; — -turning to his mates, he shouted, 
" Come on, here 's a church ; " — a simple 
story, but involving a profound question, 
Why was it safer for shipwrecked men to 
go where a church upreared its cross than 
where there was none ? 

(4.) I go a step farther when, for the 
same reasons, I urge upon you a study of 
the character of Jesus Christ. 

It is almost a modern thing, this analy- 
sis and measurement of that divine Person. 
In former days, when religious thought 
took chiefly theological forms, the Christ 
was but a factor of a system ; but since we 
have begun to think from more practical 
stand-points, the question has arisen. What 
sort of a man was Christ? Dr. Bushnell, 



224 FAITH. 

in the famous tenth chapter of his book, 
" Nature and the Supernataral," first made 
the question a general one in this country. 
In Enghmd, it had found phice in the writ- 
ings of Coleridge, Dr. Arnold, Maurice, 
Robertson, and others of their school of 
thought. It became popular through " Ecce 
Homo," and is to-day the favorite theme 
of religious speculation, as shown in Phil- 
lips Brooks's '' Influence of Jesus," and in 
Thomas Hughes's " Manliness of Christ." 
Led by such teachers as these, you find 
that you have before you a character more 
curiously interesting, more wonderful than 
any other that history can show. You find 
that you cannot classify him, — elusive and 
passing out of sight on some sides of his 
character, yet most near and tangible on 
other sides, — a Jew, yet not Jewish, — of 
the first century and equally of all centu- 
ries, — an idealist, but not transcending 
possibility ; a reformer, but not a destroyer ; 
making for the first time what is highest in 
character, the most effective in action, — a 
true full member of the common humanity, 
but transcending it till he is one with God, 
a being at the same time so weak that he 
can die, and so strong that he is superior to 



FAITE. 225 

death, a person at once so near and human 
that we call him our brother, and so high 
and mysterious that we bow at his feet as 
our Lord and Master. 

Now, no thoughtful person can get be- 
yond the first superficial look at this Jesus, 
without ever after holding him in highest 
veneration. Nor can one study this char- 
acter long without perceiving that it con- 
tains the true order of humanity, and " points 
the way we are going " to the end of time. 
Nor can we long contemplate the Christ 
without feeling his personality pressing upon 
ours with transforming power. 

(5.) Allow full play to the sense of ac- 
countability. 

When Daniel Webster was Secretary of 
State under President Fillmore, he was in- 
vited to a dinner at the Astor House with 
about twenty gentlemen. He seemed weary 
with his journey, and, speaking but little, 
if at all, sank into a sort of reverie, out of 
keeping with the occasion. All other at- 
tempts at conversation failing, a gentleman 
put to him this strange question : " Mr. 
Webster, will you tell me what was the 
most important thought that ever occupied 
your mind?" Mr. Webster slowly passed 



226 FAITH. 

his Land over liis forehead, and in a low 
tone said to one near him, " Is there any- 
one here who does not kno^v me ? " " No ; 
all are your friends." " The most important 
thought that ever occupied my mind," said 
Mr. Webster, " was that of my individual 
responsibility to God ! " upon which he 
spoke to them for twenty minutes, when he 
rose from the table and retired to liis room.^ 

It is the most important thought, becaus(3 
it pertains to our highest relation. It ushers 
in that sum of all duties, — fidelity. It is 
the only tliought that can move our whole 
nature and move it aright. Pleasure and 
ambition and self-respect touch us on this 
side and on that, but they do not invest us 
with an all-embracing purpose, as does this 
sense of "individual resiDonsibility to God." 
There are noble motives and passions that 
bear us to noble conclusions in conduct and 
character, but only this lifts us to the height 
of our being. "- God made us for Himself," 
says Augustine, '' and we have no rest till 
we find rest in Him." 

(6.) Have for yourself definite religious 
duties and relations. 

I think you all understand very well that 

1 Mr. Harvey's Jieminiscences, page 403. 



FAITH. 227 

the common talk about respecting religion 
is of very little moment, apart from conduct. 
Whatever other mistake you make in re- 
spect to religion, don't patronize it. This 
is a very matter-of-fact world, and religion 
is the most matter-of-fact thing in it. The 
hard common sense of the matter is that a 
practical relation to faith is the only real 
and vital relation to it. I am at the far- 
thest from hinting under what name you 
should worship ; I only say that reason re- 
quires that you kneel at some altar, and 
that you confess in some real way your be- 
lief " in the communion of saints." To get 
the good of other relations, you fulfill them. 
To learn good manners, you mingle in 
society. To secure a fair name, you tell 
the truth and maintain your honor. If you 
belong to a club, or lodge, or board of direct- 
ors, you meet its appointments. Do not 
regard the external forms of faith with less 
intelligent logic. 

I have no fear that you will think I sum- 
mon you to other than the most manly view 
of life when I urge the religious view of it. 

We have linked our themes at many 
points with the testimony of the great minds 
whose inspiration it is the glory of your 



228 FAITE. 

youth that you feel and respond to. They 
speak as emphatically here as elsewhere. 

When Walter Scott was approaching his 
end, he said to Lockhart, " I may have but 
a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a 
good man, — be virtuous, — be religious, — 
be a good man. Nothing else will give you 
any comfort wlien you come to lie here ; " 
— a pensive testimony, but how tender and 
honest ! 

All critical thought agrees that in Hamlet 
we have not only tlie profoundest but the 
most personal thouglit of Shakespeare. It 
is hard to resist the feeling that in the fol- 
lowing lines he struck deeper than the artist, 
and revealed a personal conviction and ex- 
perience. At least, he knew what a man 
will do who has sounded life, and caught 
sight of his work. 

" And so, without more circumstance at all, 
I hold it fit that we shake hands, and part; 
You, as your business and desire shall point you, — 
For every man has business and desire, 
Such as it is, — and for mine own poor part, 
Look you, i HI ffopray.'^ 



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